Quality and Standards intervention

This process provides the University Quality Team the ability to intervene where a particular and significant quality and standards issue in education provision or the student academic experience is identified. This is different from instigating a full Periodic Programme Revalidation, which would not be an effective use of resource to resolve a single issue, or the standard University Quality Team review process, which is bound to a schedule and is a general health check of quality and standards.

Given the ad-hoc nature of the intervention, there is no formal policy in place, but this gives the Quality Team the right to investigate and resolve a significant quality issue where this has been identified through intelligence, data metrics or any forms of information, at the point of detection. If such an issue was identified through a PPR or UQT review then that existing process would be used to address it. Any intervention will be focussed and address and resolve the identified issue in a timely way.

Triggers for such an intervention may, for example, be:

• Insufficient action in response to a recommendation emanating from a previous quality review
• Issue raised by an external examiner
• Issue raised by an accrediting body
• Issue raised by students, including where a series of complaints have been made on a particular quality and standards issue
• Issue suggested by data or routine reports, such as continued serious errors in exam papers

The features of the intervention would be that:

• It could be instigated at a programme, subject or school level in the context of the level/s of study (UG, PGT and/or PGR focussed)
• It could be instigated in response to feedback from students, staff or external examiners or from a query arising from data quality metrics
• A small panel would be established drawn from University Quality Team members
• The panel would meet with the relevant staff role-holders and/or a meeting with a group of staff/students to understand the issue and then support the area of consideration in coming to an agreed position for resolving the issue
• The appraisal would result in a short report, with recommendations, which would be shared with the relevant school and faculty post-holders and with AQSC with associated deadlines for completion.