Role of critical friend

Role of critical friend

Once the business case has been approved, the Lead Academic will be assigned a critical friend whose role is to provide advice on the academic case. Critical friends are recruited to the role by AQPO, which will contact proposers with the name of the person assigned.

The role of the critical friend is to provide internal scrutiny of, and advice on, the academic case for new programmes and high risk changes to existing programmes. As Lead Academic, you should make contact with your critical friend as soon as one has been allocated, providing draft documents (the rationale and proposal as developed so far) and agreeing a method of working and an appropriate timescale for finalisation of the proposal. Your Critical Friend will produce a report which must be considered at the school and faculty committee stage before approval can be given.

It is suggested you consider the following as minimum contact requirements with your critical friend:

Further information about Critical Friends (and useful links).