Higher Education for the 21st Century Response to the Garrick Report

3. TEACHING, QUALITY AND STANDARDS

3.1 Learning and Teaching

Recommendation 8 - We recommend to higher education institutions that they should, on behalf of their staff, establish or seek access to programmes accredited by the proposed Institute for Learning and Teaching that support teaching excellence. Institutions should encourage new and existing staff, including higher education teachers in the further education sector, to join the Institute.

The Government supports the Committee’s recommendation. Teachers will have to respond to an increasingly discerning student population. The growth in information technology will open up new ways of learning and teaching and teachers will be increasingly involved in learning partnerships with major employers. The Government acknowledges the fact that the proposed Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education will be a body funded and regulated by the subscription of its members. It is, however, primarily a matter for the higher education institutions to take forward.

3.2 Quality and Standards

Recommendation 9 - We recommend to the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council that for as long as Teaching Quality Assessment remains the main quality assessment mechanism in operation in Scotland, a review cycle of not more than six years should be in place.

SHEFC has informed Ministers that its programme of teaching quality assessment will cease following the end of its first cycle at the end of academic year 1997-98.

Recommendation 10 - We recommend to the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council and the Quality Assurance Agency that they should meet, as soon as practical, to begin negotiations that will ensure that the criteria to support Scotland’s inclusion in the Agency are met at an early date.

The Government welcomes the advice it has received from SHEFC that it has entered into discussions with the new QAA about development of trials for the new quality assurance system in Scotland.