I proceeded to the launching of the
workshop ‘International Practices in quality assurance’, held at La Cannelle,
Domaine Les Pailles. I was pleased to welcome the distinguished resource
persons who were there today to share their views and experiences on quality
assurance in tertiary education – a topic of much interest to us. It is a dynamic and multi dimensional
concept. Generally we would associate
the term quality with a notion of excellence. In the field of tertiary
education, quality has developed into various facets such as quality as fitness
for purpose, quality as fitness of purpose, quality as a mechanism for value
addition, quality for student centred transformation and quality as enhancement
or improvement. As we consider the need for quality in tertiary education, all
these different facets of quality have one very essential common component -
that is continuous improvement of academic standards.Our ultimate aim
should be to develop a culture of quality within the tertiary education
institutions and consider linking public funding of tertiary education to
quality indicators as a means to ensure continuous quality improvements.
Since Quality is a
prime concern of this Government and my Ministry in particular, I expect that today’s
workshop, based on an overview of quality assurance practices of three
countries will help them to assess our
regulatory framework and support capacity building in quality assurance.
