Quality Enhancement Policy Essay Example for Free

feature Enhancement Policy Essay1.1 Introduction and BackgroundThe Government of Pakistan realised high Education Commission (HEC) in 2002 to facilitate harvest-feast of indigenous universities of Pakistan to become centers of step of education and search and learnment. Though this process, HEC work outs to play its role in building of have sexledge-based thriftiness in Pakistan. In order to strive this goal, HEC has undertaken a systematic plan of implementation that is 5year Medium Term Development theoretical account (MTDF). The main aim of HEC was to focus on tonus and relevance (HEC, 2010). The core strategic atomic number 18as of MTDF are1- Faculty development2- meliorate enrollment3- fibre in learning and explore4- Importance to national planThese plans are back up by well-integrated crosscutting themes for developing leadership, governance and counsel, enhancing flavour sagaciousness and accreditation, and physical and technological infrastructure de velopment, (Batool, 2010).HEC introduces role sweetening cell in universities for maintaining and change the academic tincture in the country by establishing that criteria are beingness met and educational activities are also in an agreement with the plans of the commission. According to international practices and development, HEC improves plans in order to much improve the types. HEC intends to achieve excellence in the higher education and by taking major initiatives to develop the performance of universities and started up with the primary step of outlining the performance evaluation standards for the universities. For this, numbers of muniments are defined, every document of these articulates a detailed element of the institutional tonicity. Therefor these documents are equally important for achieving the desired certifications to quality enhancement in higher education (Batool, 2010).Self-Assessment is an essential element in completing the HEC recognition. The recomm endations for Self-Assessment are print as The Manual for Self-Assessment for the purpose of implementation at department / programed level in the universities. The complete practices of cozy Quality authorisation (IQA) are controlled by the QECs established under the umbrella of the Quality government agency delegacy (QAA) of HEC at the universities and consequently develop an integral part of the universities have-to doe with. Further more the QECs also work in management with authorization bodies to make the process of program level accreditation.However, the institutional act of evaluation has many more measurements with greater complexity, (HEC, 2006).This thesis defines the Institutional performance evaluation standards and to make sure that quality proof is aware by the HEC for the universities. The institutional act assessment comes under the Purview of the HEC whereas this process is dated by the moments of IQA consummation done by the universities through impleme ntation of the Self-Assessment Model. The effects of Self-Assessment will agree to the process of functioning Evaluation Standards for the HEIs to be directed by the HEC in line with lift out performs of External Quality Assurance (Raouf,2010).The Higher Education Commission is working for continuous improvement of these standards and their effectiveness. The HEC through QAA will assess soulfulness institutions periodically established on the performance evaluation standards defined here. These periodic reviews will be shown from emplacement to side an arrangement of On-Site Assessment by Performance Assessment Teams under the direction of QAA. The quality standards observed by a university will be documented only as a result of successful performance assessment reviews through evaluation of institutional successes against pre-defined principles (HEC, 2011).To sustain academic quality and standards in higher education the institutions need to be professional, creative and innova tive. The vision, mission and objectives are the essential values when utilize in its principle, examined and measured are likely to be fruitful. The motivation of assigning all these movements and applying them under the leave of QEC is not only to emphasize on maintaining the best faculty, administrative round and students but to be best in research, emerging interdisciplinary courses, academic performance, strategic and integrated academic planning (GCU, 2011)Quality in academic development means agreement of all the stakeholders where the challenge is to deliver education which is continuously improving and is at the same level with the international standards. In recent years it has become a emergency that institutions of higher education demonstrate the success of their academic programs in providing high quality education that impacts the concerned stakeholders. The Higher Education Commission develops methods for evaluating the quality of academic programs (Kanwal, 2007) .Moreover with the establishment of Quality Assurance Agencies at Higher Education Commission, it was decided in the National Quality Assurance Committee (NQAC) meeting that Quality Enhancement Cells will be established at all universities to make stronger the internal quality assumption procedure with a special emphasis on the quality of higher education to fill the to-do between the fundamental and the desired status of quality education, (HEC,2011).The matter of quality is being known as the major issue confronting the higher education sector in the Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF). Therefore, to enhance the quality of output and efficiency of the higher education learning systems, a mechanism for the establishment of QECs has been developed by the Quality Assurance Committee to improve the standards of quality of higher education in a systematic way with uniformity across the country.The Higher Education Commission (HEC) established Quality Enhancement Cells (QECs) at ten overt sector universities in 2006-07 whereas in 2007-08 more twenty QECs were established in the remaining public sector universities for enhancement of their academic, t all(prenominal)ing and learning standards. The QEC family is being extended to surplus fifteen public sectors and fifteen private sector universities in 2009-10 and twenty four in public sector universities in 2010-11 (Zafar, 2006). At the moment, the HEC has given incentives to encourage research, appoint foreign faculty, funds for workshops and conferences, and granting scholarship to go overseas to present research or do postgraduate research. It shows the deep concern of HEC regarding QA.The quality of research is a special focus and HEC has developed a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism, (kanwal, 2007) It has established a QA Cell that states the necessary to improve a culture of assessment is always together with the concept of quality. Both internal self-evaluation and international reviews are dyn amic components of any well-developed quality assurance system. It is entirely critical to monitor and control growth of sub-standard institutions of higher learning. A comprehensive multi-level mechanism of accreditation is to be developed to make sure establishment of quality education. booking needs to occur at the department or program level, as well as the Institutional level. (HEC, 2011)1.2FUNCTIONS OF THE QUALITY ENHANCEMENT CELLS1. The Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) is to be supervised by a Dean reporting directly to Vice Chancellor/Rector. 2. QEC is amenable for maintaining public confidence that the quality and standards of the abide by of degrees are improved and secured. 3. QEC is responsible for the review of quality standards and the quality of teaching and learning in each subject area. 4. QEC is responsible for the assessment of academic affiliations with other institutions in terms of effective management of standards and quality of programs. 5. QEC is responsibl e for essential clear and explicit standards as points of reference to the evaluations to be carried out. It should also help the employees to know as to what they could expect from give the axedidates. 6. QEC is responsible to improve qualifications framework by setting out the qualities and skills that can be expected from the holder of a qualification, i.e. Bachelors, Bachelor with Honors, Masters, M. Phil., and Doctoral. 7. QEC is responsible to improve program qualifications.These are standard set of information clarifying what knowledge, understanding, skills and other qualities a student will have developed on successfully completing a Degree. 8. QEC is responsible to improve quality assurance processes and methods of assessment to affirm that the quality of provision and the standard of awards are being maintained and to foster a program of study, subject and staff development, together with research and other academic activities. 9. QEC is responsible to make sure that the universitys quality assurance techniques are designed to fit in with the arrangements in place nationally for maintaining and improving the quality of Higher Education. 10. QEC is responsible to develop procedures for the followinga). New programs approvalb). Annual monitoring and evaluation including program, faculty, and students monitoring perception.c). Departmental assessmente). Student commentf). Comments of Employerg). Quality assurance of Masters, M.Phil and Ph.D. degree Programsh). Review of Subjectsi). Institutional assessmentj). Program specificationsk). Qualification frameworkUniversities play a significant role in the overall development of a country, their deduction lies not only in providing degrees, but also in producing quality human resources for various zones of the economy (GIKI, 2011).To succeed this goal, Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) has designed some guiding principle to evaluate the quality of education in Pakistan to the ever changing conditions and glob al needs (HEC, 2011).It is state that Higher Educations unique and symbolic phase is Quality Enhancement in Pakistan by IMscience that Importance of Quality can be understood from the fact that rapid development in higher education requires Quality Assurance in order to put up with current levels of academic standards and improve modern learning processes (IMScience, 2011).