Accreditation of existing programme

General info

The accreditation system for Dutch higher education comprises two types of accreditation:

• Initial accreditation of a new programme, valid for a period of six years;

• Accreditation of an existing programme, which, following a positive assessment, is valid indefinitely.

All programmes are periodically assessed by a panel of independent experts (peers) approved by NVAO. This assessment takes place in a comparative context with related programmes that are grouped into review clusters. For each programme, a submission date is set (1 May or 1 November) by which the review report must be submitted to NVAO. Missing this deadline may affect the accreditation status.

Institutions are required to report all variants (full-time, part-time, dual), tracks, specialisations, locations, and statutory professional requirements in the review report or accreditation application. Programme components that are not reported fall outside the scope of accreditation.

Please note: all reports must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For further details, see the information on NVAO website.

Programmes offered may make use of the standard assessment framework. Institutions that have not received a positive outcome on the Institutional Audit of Quality Assurance (ITK) are subject to additional standards, including the assessment of facilities and quality assurance. The number of standards to be assessed is four for programmes of institutions with ITK, and six for those without ITK.

The final judgement may be positive, conditionally positive, or negative. If conditions are imposed, the programme must demonstrate, within a timeframe set by NVAO, that these conditions have been met.

NVAO is entering into collaborative agreements with international sectoral and/or professional organisations in order to combine external review and accreditation procedures wherever possible.

NVAO has issued guidelines on the execution of the review process and the working methods of panels. Institutions may propose their own panel and secretary for the assessment of existing programmes, provided they are approved by NVAO.