The Academic Assurance project has been designed to ensure effective academic assurance. This has been driven by the increased need for governors to understand and effectively receive evidence-based assurance about “student outcomes” in England as a requirement from the OfS, but increasingly in other UK Nations as part of their regulatory requirements.
Governing bodies are expected to actively seek assurances that academic assurance is robust and effective. This becomes ever-more important with the political interest in issues surrounding quality in higher education and ensuring value for money for public expenditure.
As sector partners, we undertook a first phase of work in 2022-23 that saw us conduct roundtables with governance professionals; senate and student members of the board and Chairs of Audit and Risk Committees. The learning from these webinars was shared back with the sector in a webinar.
Aim
In 2023-24, we have all committed to Phase 2 of the Academic Assurance project. We will be working with key representatives across the HE sector to develop a series of key reflective questions that governing bodies can use to test and further develop their own academic assurance. We will also be commissioning a series of case studies that will highlight different practices higher education institutions have undertaken to improve academic assurance as part of our commitment to connecting the higher education sector.
Phase 1 – Project Outputs
The activity contained within this member project for Phase 1 includes blogs, webinars and dissemination events where the project theme can be examined.
News Article
Academic Assurance: phase one summary
The first phase of the project has provided the opportunity to convene the sector to explore emerging practices in academic governance and assurance within the higher education sector.
Dissemination Event
In March 2023, Advance HE, Universities UK, Guild HE, and the Committee of University Chairs held three roundtables with Governance professionals, Senate and Student representatives, and Chairs and Deputies of Audit and Risk Committees to examine approaches to academic assurance. At the Dissemination Event, we presented the roundtable findings from the round table and discussed these with a panel of sector experts and representatives.
Phase 2 – Project Outputs
Project output – Guide
Academic Assurance Reflective Questions Guide
A brief guidance resource for use by governing bodies and governance professionals to be undertaken as part of any self-assessment work or continual improvement. The questions are designed to help institutions start reflecting on their own processes and practises.
Published On: 04/10/2023
Academic Governance and Assurance – role of the board of governors: reflective questions
Reflective questions from the academic assurance project
Project Output – Case Study
Academic Assurance Case Study
This case study from Buckinghamshire New University looks at how they went about mapping all of their academic assurance data sources, giving them a fuller understanding of the academic work taking place across the institution. It is designed in this project output to support higher education institution governing bodies with innovating their own practice in academic assurance.
Project Team
People
Alex Bols
Chief of Staff
Dr Alex Bols is Chief of Staff at the University of East Anglia before which he was Deputy Chief Executive Officer at GuildHE – one of the representative bodies in UK higher education – from 2014-2024. He was previously Executive Director of the 1994 Group, Head of Higher Education and Assistant Director (Research) at NUS, Senior Campaigns, Conferences and Events Officer at Universities UK and Secretary General of the European Students’ Union.
Rowan Fisher
Policy Researcher
Rowan is a Policy Researcher working at Universities UK. He spends his time researching policy and supporting the sector to take collective action on the issues of the day. He is a school governor and recently completed an MA in Policy Studies in Education from University College London.
John Rushforth
Senior Governance Associate
John is a nationally recognised expert on UK University governance. He is responsible for the key documents that underpin the governance of all publicly funded UK HE institutions namely the CUC HE Code of Governance, the HE Senior Staff Remuneration Code, a range of illustrative practice notes e.g. Academic Assurance, Recruitment of VCs, etc and a Leadership Foundation publication on the relationship between Vice Chancellors and Chairs.
Dan Tinkler
Consultant, Governance and Strategic Transformation
Dan joined Advance HE in January 2020 and has been in the post of Governance Development Manager and Consultant, Governance and Strategic Transformation since October 2021. Dan works on developing our approach to supporting Advance HE’s member needs across our governance portfolio of work.
Resources and Related Events
‘More work to do’: internal academic governance and governing body assurance
How are governing bodies seeking assurance on academic quality?
How universities are turning the corner on grade inflation?
Academic governance and assurance
