Academic Programme Reviews

What is Taught Programme Review Process?

All taught undergraduate and postgraduate academic programmes delivered in the University must be quality reviewed in compliance with national and European regulations and guidelines.

Periodic Quality Reviews of our programmes involve two interrelated processes:

(i)                  internal Self-assessment by staff; and

(ii)                external Peer Review by an independent external expert.

Self-assessment involves programme staff assessing the quality and performance of their programme and benchmarking it against international best practice. It also involves generating and implementing ideas that can increase quality and performance.

Peer Review involves inviting an independent expert from another University to evaluate the self-assessment process, provide insight and ideas and then issue recommendations on how to improve the quality and performance of the programme. Reviewers are required to find evidence of compliance against the Core Statutory Quality Assurance Guidelines and other relevant national and European policies and guidelines. All taught academic programmes must be reviewed at least once every seven years by an independent reviewer (typically a past or existing External Examiner or equivalent).     Accredited programmes are considered to have met the requirements of this policy and are exempt from this process.

It is the responsibility of the Programme Director, with the help of the Programme Board, to initiate and manage the review process.  Programmes must be reviewed every seven years.  The Programme Director will prepare the self-assessment report, develop an action plan and implement the resulting actions. 

Deans and Heads of School must maintain oversight of the programme review process and the Head of School must maintain a record of the review of all taught academic programmes in the school. 

Peer Review involves inviting an independent expert from another University to evaluate the self-assessment process, provide insight and ideas and then issue recommendations on how to improve the quality and performance of the programme. Reviewers are required to find evidence of compliance against the Core Statutory Quality Assurance Guidelines and other relevant national and European policies and guidelines. All taught academic programmes

Further Information