The UK Quality Code for Higher Education - Advice and Guidance: Principle 1 - Taking a strategic approach to managing quality and standards

This Advice and Guidance supports the UK Quality Code and is designed to unpack Sector-Agreed Principle 1 - Taking a strategic approach to managing quality and standards and the Key Practices that sit under it.
Providers demonstrate they have a strategic approach to securing academic standards and assuring and enhancing quality that is embedded across the organisation.
Key Practices
a. Academic standards and the quality of the student learning experience are the responsibility of the provider. Degree-awarding bodies are aware that they have ultimate responsibility for the qualifications offered in their name.
b. The strategic approach is employed wherever and however provision is delivered and is embedded in the culture and practices of providers.
c. The strategic approach aligns with providers’ policies and practices on equity, equality, diversity and inclusion, and environmental sustainability for students and staff.
d. The strategic approach to securing academic standards, quality assurance and enhancement is published, communicated clearly and accessible to staff, students and external stakeholders. It is supported by a comprehensive and transparent governance framework.
e. The strategic approach is monitored and evaluated on a regular basis.
f. External expertise is a key element of the strategic approach to managing quality and standards.

It has been produced by QAA in partnership with a writing group of sector experts and peer-reviewed by colleagues across UK higher education. This is in accordance with the ethos that the Quality Code remains a sector-agreed reference point, built on a shared understanding of what providers can expect of themselves and each other in the assurance and enhancement of quality and the maintenance of standards across post-secondary education throughout the UK. QAA would like to thank the writing group and peer readers for their invaluable contribution in developing this guidance. An important contextual note relates to the diversity of higher education providers in the UK. Providers can be large universities, operating with significant infrastructure, or small specialist providers, operating on a significantly smaller scale, or any number of other different operating models. The Advice and Guidance is designed to be useful for all providers (and representatives from a range of providers formed the writing and peer review groups), but we recognise that, on occasion, the nomenclature used could suggest a larger provider’s context. It is important that each reader interprets the Advice and Guidance in the context of their own operating environment and that all readers recognise that quality and homogeneity are not synonymous. Scope This Advice and Guidance encourages providers to reflect on their practice and processes in relation to the Sector-Agreed Principle. Following the Advice and Guidance is not mandatory, but illustrative of approaches that can help providers meet the relevant Principle. National regulators and QAA do not view the information in the Advice and Guidance as compliance indicators. This guidance does not interpret statutory requirements.