NVAO • Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders

NVAO is the independent and binational accreditation organisation set up by the Dutch and Flemish governments. NVAO’s primary goal it is to provide an expert and objective judgement of the quality of higher education in Flanders and the Netherlands. Its activities include:

• the recognition of new higher education institutions in which NVAO looks at the potential quality of higher education provision alongside national authorities’ appraisal of legal and organisational issues of the new provider;
• institutional audits in which NVAO assesses the institutional quality assurance system;
• the initial accreditation of new programmes (i.e. programmes that want to offer a recognised degree);
• the accreditation of programmes that already offer a recognised degree;
• the assessment of distinctive (quality) features of programmes and institutions at the request of the relevant institution;
• the publication of decisions (and officially recognised degrees) in the NVAO database; and
• the internationalisation activities related to quality assurance in higher education.

NVAO is registered on EQAR.