CaSecl4p COMO DIANA PARA EL DESARROLLO DE NUEVOS Y SELECTIVOS AGENTES ANTIFÚNGICOS.

6.2.1 New structures and systems

As a result of the Further and Higher Education Act (1992) parallel systems of audit by the Higher Education Quality Council and subject assessment by the Funding Councils were introduced simultaneously into UK higher education. Each of these new public bodies required its own systems of governance and management to undertake these tasks, while the universities in their turn had to set up corresponding systems and prepare their staff to respond to their new demands.

HEFCE’s preparation for the first round of assessments entailed the major task of

recruiting and training over 400 subject specialist assessors for the first eight subject areas to be assessed (HEFCE M2/94, Para. 11.11) and in addition to offering training, the Funding Councils and the HEQC produced special guidelines for their assessors and auditors. Likewise for the universities, especially in the days before universal access to computers, preparation for an audit or an assessment was a considerable undertaking entailing a great deal of hard work in assembling (and sometimes in the pre-92 universities compiling from scratch) the necessary documentation, as well as the statistical information requested. Assessment visits then included a three-day programme of meetings between assessors, staff and students, as well as observation of ‘a full range of teaching and learning activities’ (HEFCE M2/94, Para. 11.12) followed by the writing, discussion and

publication of reports and for the universities, complying with any recommendations for action. In parallel, the HEQC took over the role of monitoring the universities’ quality audit systems from the former AAU.

HEFCE issued an important guidance document (C3/93) setting out in detail the purposes and methods for the assessment of quality which incorporated a number of the key

principles and policies expressed in the 1987 and 1991 White Papers . The duty to ‘inform funding and reward excellence’, (M2/94 para. 11.6) was accompanied by a threat that funding would be removed from substandard provision. It also made clear that assessment of teaching quality was to be made by reference to the universities’ own stated objectives, enshrining the principle of diversity in UK higher education.

Table 6.1: The Purposes of Quality Assessment (HEFCE C93: 3.1)

• To ensure that all education for which the HEFCE provides funding is of satisfactory quality or better

• To ensure speedy rectification of unsatisfactory quality

• To encourage improvements in the quality of education through the publication of assessment reports and an annual report

• To inform funding and reward excellence

The circular C3/93 described HEFCE’s approach to assessment by subject area ‘within the context of an institution’s own aims and objectives’ and introduced three assessment categories, ‘excellent’, ‘satisfactory’ and ‘unsatisfactory’ (see Table 3.9). It then explained elements of the quality assessment method, including institutional self-assessment (to contain copious amounts of statistical data), the recruitment and training of the assessors and the conduct of assessment visits which would only be made to institutions which had established a ‘prima facie case for excellence, or where there were grounds for concern that quality might be ‘at risk’ (HEFCE M2/94, 11.12).

The purposes of quality assurance did not remain stable for long. Comparison between Circulars 3/93 and 39/94 the following year reveals how core purposes were modified in the light of ‘more recent statements of Government expectations’, in this case to comply with a speech by the Secretary of State, John Patten, which had emphasised ‘accountability for public funds, a link with funding to enhance quality, providing accessible public

information, and sharing and publicising best practice’ (HEFCE C39/94, para. 22.d). The financial priorities of securing value from public investment and linking quality

assessments with funding had been elevated to the top of the list, the idea of rewarding excellence had been lost with the abolition of the ‘excellent’ grade, and aims to share best practice and provide accessible public information had been added.

6.2.2 The volume of work

Early commentaries on quality audit and assessment in England (Coopers, 1993; CHES, 1994) detailed the quality assurance programmes implemented and emphasised the volume of work undertaken. By the end of 1993, HEFCE had carried out 288 subject assessments in 128 institutions, (CHES, 1994: 17) while the Academic Audit Unit of the CVCP and its successor, the HEQC’s Division of Quality Audit, had produced 69 academic audit reports by April 1994 (Learning from Audit 1, 1994: vi). The review teams commented on the considerable achievements by HEFCE and the HEQC in getting the audit and assessment processes up and running so soon, particularly during a time of great upheaval within the sector. By any standard this represented an impressive response to government demands for ‘efficiency’ throughout the higher education sector. On the other hand predictions about the amount of work in preparing for and participating in the quality assurance processes were starting to be fulfilled. Interviewee 2 who had himself been involved in preparing his department for an assessment visit recalled that quality assurance ‘started being prominent in universities in the 90s in a form that required more work than anything we’d done before or since’ (I: 2). Continuing experience of the inexorable cycles of the twin processes of audit and assessment greatly increased the strain.

6.2.3 Careers in quality

Maintaining the systems of assessment and audit was a demanding and costly process. Apart from employing the necessary staff in their own organisations, both the Funding Councils and the HEQC had to recruit, train and pay large numbers of assessors and auditors. An advertisement placed by the HEQC in the THES of 26 January 1994 looked for auditors able to ‘commit themselves to undertaking up to ten audits in three years, each audit involving between 12 and 15 days’ with a fee of £900 per audit being paid. Auditors would be expected to fit a demanding person specification and would ‘normally’ be senior members of an institution’s academic or administrative staff, though might also be

individuals ‘with appropriate experience from outside higher education’. (THES, 26 January 1994). Three reviews (Coopers, 1993, CHES, 1994 and Johnstone et al., 1995) all mentioned the personal benefits gained by academics who participated as assessors in these

processes. Having in-house staff who understood the quality assurance processes and language was also an effective way of embedding the systems within the universities. Despite these potential benefits, however, it was a significant new commitment for the universities to release senior members of staff to undertake these demanding extra commitments during the academic year to operate the quality assurance system.

It was quickly realised that compliance with quality assurance requirements was not a one- off effort but a permanent and expanding addition to the work of university staff

throughout the UK. Williams, who had moved to the HEQC, commented on ‘the rise of the quality industry in institutions, a new branch of administration’ (I: 9). Both academics and administrators became involved in the production of information for audits and

assessments, with ‘quality assurance officers’ being appointed at department level to co- ordinate the process and pass the information to specially appointed staff in central quality assurance units. Overall responsibility for quality assurance was usually given to a senior academic at vice-principal level, indicating the importance accorded to the role. These new structures offered opportunities of internal promotion for staff and external liaison with government agencies and other academic bodies in the rapidly developing world of quality assurance. John Brennan later recalled a conversation in the mid-1990s with a university administrator who described his change in status since the advent of teaching quality assessment (TQA). ‘Since TQA had arrived, he could not walk across the campus without being approached by academics seeking advice and information connected with

forthcoming TQA events. Prior to TQA he had been invisible around the institution. After it, he was famous’ (Brennan, 2012: 7).

Interviewee 2, who had devoted a great deal of time to the development of quality

assurance both within his university and externally, linked the general expansion of quality assurance and its associated bureaucracy with an increased central awareness of the

importance of teaching. This led in time to the growth of such posts as ‘Vice-Principal for Learning and Teaching’ and the creation in some universities of personal chairs for learning and teaching. In his words, ‘That may be just a bureaucratic thing but it shows a greater degree of central thinking about it’ (I. 2). While the increased focus on teaching was welcomed by many as one of the benefits of quality assurance (see chapter 12), there were some reservations about this kind of promotion. Williams commented that ‘there is a question about why you should be a professor because you’ve inflicted quality assurance on your colleagues’ and warned of the danger that ‘quality assurance can become an end rather than a means’ (I. 9).

6.2.4 Communicating quality

Another aspect of the quality ‘industry’ was the proliferation of communication between the universities and both the Funding Councils and HEQC as the systems of assessment and audit developed. In an effort to gain support from the sector, the Chief Executive of HEFCE, Professor Graeme Davies, emphasised the Council’s commitment to open communication: ‘The Council has adopted a policy of transparency within which it seeks to provide institutions in the sector with the maximum amount of information and data relevant to its policies and its decisions’ (HEFCE M2/94, para. 15.1). The archives of HEFCE chronicle the history of quality assurance in circulars, reports, forward plans and consultation papers, and personal contact between universities and the staff of HEFCE was also important (HEFCE M2/94).

Communication with the public, including publication of assessment and audit reports, was another major commitment for both HEFCE and the HEQC – an important aspect of the accountability of public bodies in the new ‘audit culture’. In accordance with the Secretary of State’s initial Letter of Guidance to the HEFCE Chairman (quoted in the Assessors’ Handbook, 1993, para. 3) Quality Assessment Reports on individual subjects produced by HEFCE were published from the outset and made available from the Council at a cost of £2, though perhaps unsurprisingly the main demand for these reports came from within the higher education sector rather than from the public (CHES, 1994, para. 11.9). From the universities’ point of view handling this volume of external communication with the Funding Councils and the HEQC became another demand on the time of staff in the quality units established in the universities.

It is notable that halfway through its second year, the HEQC Secretariat Division felt it necessary to advertise in the THES for a ‘Head of Communications’, at a salary of between £25,000 and £35,000 per annum, who would be expected ‘to play a vital role in the

development of the organisation’, including the creation of an ‘effective communications Strategy’. An interesting reflection on the new priorities was that while applicants were asked for ‘at least 5 years experience of working in the field of communications…’

knowledge of higher education was described merely as ‘an advantage’ (THES, December 1993).

In the early days of quality assurance, the requirement to publish information in the form of subject assessment reports had been a sensitive issue for the universities. As the former

Chief Executive of HEFCE commented, ‘the government wanted these subject by subject reports … and the institutions were very unhappy about that because it affected their recruitment. And because essentially it’s a bit like buying a used car, some of them would say “if it gets a really great review you’ll sell lots of them but if it’s a Trabant nobody wants to go there”’ (I: 1). The introduction of numerical scoring into the TQA process from 1995 and the publication of league tables swiftly convinced the universities of the need to persuade prospective students of the high quality of what they were offering and led to the growth of the marketing function in institutions. The varying impacts of competition on universities, staff and students have become a recurring theme in this thesis.

Though the CVCP’s Academic Audit Unit had initially been more reticent about publishing its reports, the Board of its successor body, the HEQC, decided at its first meeting in July 1992 that its audit reports should also be published (Brown, 2004: 55).