Student perspective in external quality assurance: NVAO assessments
The NVAO bases its decisions and quality judgments on an assessment conducted by a panel of external, independent experts. The NVAO appoints this panel, which evaluates whether a programme or institution delivers quality in line with internationally accepted standards. Students also play a key role in this process.
Student on the assessment panel
Each of NVAO’s expert panels includes one student as a full member, with equal input in the assessment as the other experts. For assessment procedures in Flanders, the NVAO closely collaborates with the Flemish Union of Students (VVS) and VVS coordinates the recruitment of student panel members. Interested in serving as a student panel member?
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Your involvement matters
As part of its assessment, the assessment panel explicitly investigates how the programme or institution involves students in its internal quality assurance processes.
Conversations with students
Every assessment procedure includes a site visit by the assessment panel. Every site visit includes a meeting with students. Their experiences provide a realistic picture of the quality of education in practice. For an institutional review*, the panel also holds a separate meeting with the student union. In addition, the institutional review includes an open consultation for the institution's internal and external stakeholders, allowing students who wish to do so to speak directly with the review panel.Curious to know when your institution will undergo its institutional review?
* In Flanders, responsibility for monitoring the quality of accredited programmes lies with the higher education institutions themselves. They have established their own internal systems to safeguard the quality of their programmes. Institutions are therefore responsible for demonstrating and confirming the quality of their education. Since 2019, the NVAO no longer assesses each accredited programme individually in Flanders. Instead, every six years it conducts an institutional review to determine whether the institution's educational policy and internal quality assurance system provide sufficient guarantees for the quality of its programmes. The Flemish quality assurance system is based on the principles of trust, responsibility and accountability, reflecting the confidence that institutions have built up through many years of programme evaluations.
Contributing to the design of external quality assurance
The NVAO actively involves students in shaping and improving external assessments. This ensures that external quality assurance is better aligned with the student experience.
In this way, the NVAO ensures that quality assurance is not only about students, but also developed together with students.