School and Unit Quality Review

What is the School and Unit Quality Review Process?

The University of Galway conducts quality reviews of teaching, learning and assessment of all taught programmes within Schools and of all key administrative units and services for compliance with national and European quality regulations and guidelines. 

Periodic Quality Reviews of Schools and Units involve two interrelated processes:

(i)                  internal Self-assessment by staff; and
(ii)                external Peer Review by independent experts.

Self-assessment involves University staff assessing quality and performance of their School/Unit and benchmarking it against international best practice.  It also involves   generating and implementing ideas that can increase quality and performance as part of the operational planning process. 

Peer Review involves inviting independent peers from other organisations to evaluate the    self-assessment process, provide insight and ideas and then issue recommendations on how to improve quality and performance within the School/Unit. Reviewers are specifically  required to find evidence of compliance against Core Statutory Quality Assurance (QA)

Guidelines and other relevant national and European policies and guidelines or their equivalent e.g. professional accreditations.

The Quality Office manages the Unit Quality Review Process.  Each unit is required to be reviewed every seven years.  The Quality Enhancement Committee and Academic Council approve the schedule of reviews on behalf of Údarás na hOllscoile.  A key part of the review process is the site visit carried out by an externally led review team on campus over three days. The visit includes meetings with all key stakeholders in the school or unit including head of unit, self-assessment team, staff, students and external stakeholders.  Following the site visit, a review report is finalised and action plan agreed.  Review reports and action plans are presented to UMT and must be made publicly available on the Quality Office website.  

The key stages in the school/unit review process are outlined below:

Further Information