Le rapport d'évaluation de l'AERES par ENQA

Download The External review report of the French Evaluation Agency for Research and Higher Education (AERES) with regard to the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, May 2010.
Introduction
This document is the external review report of the French Evaluation Agency for Research and Higher Education (AERES). This evaluation was conducted in April 2010 in Paris with a view to determining whether or not the AERES meets the required criteria for being a full member of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA).
1.1 Members of the expert panel
The review was conducted in accordance with the procedure described in the Guidelines for National Reviews of ENQA Member Agencies and schedule provided for in the terms of reference (Annex 1 of the Report). It was coordinated by the Agencia Nacional de Evaluación de la Calidad y Acreditación (ANECA) in Spain.
The expert panel was composed as follows:
• Prof. Francisco Marcellán – Chairman, Professor of Applied Mathematics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; former Director of ANECA;
• Prof. Guy Aelterman – Member, Vice-Chancellor, Artesis University College, Antwerp, Belgium, external expert of the ECA;
• Prof. Françoise Bevalot – Member, Professor of Pharmacy at the Université de Franche-Comté, institution adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education and Research;
• Mrs Marta-Norah Sanz – Member, Doctoral Student in the Department of Earth Sciences and Condensed Matter Physics, Universidad de Cantabria;
• Prof. Michel Zink – Member, Professor of French mediaeval literature, Collège de France;
• Prof. Jacques L’Écuyer – Secretary, Higher Education Consultant for various international organizations.
The experts were put forward by ANECA, appointed by ENQA and accepted by the AERES.

5. Conclusion: the AERES’ conformity to the ESG
5.1 Summary of the AERES’ main strengths
- The AERES has a legal form which guarantees its independence in relation to stakeholders.
- The AERES’ mission is clearly defined in its founding Law.
- The AERES has significant human and material resources for undertaking large-scale projects and conducting an impressive number of evaluations within a limited timeframe.
- The AERES has developed Quality Standards enabling it both to regulate its
international operations and its external activities.
- The AERES has a very complete institutional evaluation guide that is likely to provide an effective framework for the self-evaluations of institutions and the work of its experts.
- In the first three years since it was set up, the AERES has shown its ability to learn from its experiences for the sake of continuously improving its evaluation processes.
- The AERES has been able to evaluate – in a professional manner – almost all French higher education institutions, thereby demonstrating its competence and the devotion of its staff.
- The AERES has helped to develop a quality culture within institutions that comes through in the self-evaluation reports some institutions now produce.
- The AERES has set up a remarkable information system that is not at odds with its ability to successfully complete a large number of evaluations.
5.2 Summary of the main points to improve
- The AERES must continue its efforts to develop an evaluation culture within institutions by paying greater attention to the quality of the self-evaluation provided by institutions and to the participation of professors, students and staff in producing it.
- Along the same lines, the AERES should improve its evaluation guide by incorporating criteria focusing specifically on the quality assurance strategy of institutions or by making existing criteria more precise, and ensure that the means provided for in this strategy are put into practice.
- The AERES’ procedures for evaluating bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees should be revised to bring them more into line with the ESG requirements.
- The AERES’ strategic plan has its positive points, but could be improved by the agency specifying the means it intends to implement to achieve its objectives, the persons responsible for this and the timeframes.
- In its strategic plan, the AERES wants to add a greater international dimension to its activities. The panel encourages it to do so, amongst other things by calling more systematically on international experts to carry out its evaluations.
- With the current evaluation cycle, there is a risk that evaluations become routine and ineffective. The panel suggests that the AERES look into the possibility of extending the current cycle.
- Alongside its Council, the members of which are stipulated by Law, it could be in the AERES’ interests to set up an advisory committee with members from various sectors – particularly students and international specialists.
- The AERES has excellent Quality Standards. It would be worth linking these explicitly in with its evaluation guide.
- With this in mind, the panel suggests that the AERES make the criteria in its evaluation guide more precise and ensure that they concern both the effectiveness and existence of quality assurance procedures and policies.
- The AERES’ procedures are promising. They could be improved from several aspects:
o The AERES could send the preliminary version of its evaluation report to institutions to obtain their comments before writing the final report. This stage should not, for all that, change the procedure in place of integrating the institution’s reactions to the final report.
o The AERES could also send the final version of the report to the experts before it is put on its website.
o The question of scores and their publication raised several comments during the site visit. The AERES should perhaps discuss this issue with the main stakeholders – particularly in the research sector. It would also do well to consider the possibility of revising the score when clear improvements have been made.
o The AERES would gain from annually updating its pool of student experts.
- The AERES should set up follow-up procedures to enable it to assess the measures taken following its evaluations quickly.
5.3 Final position
To sum up, following this evaluation, the expert panel concludes that the AERES substantially conforms to the ENQA standards as regards almost all of its criteria. As a result, the panel recommends that the AERES be included as a full member and listed in the ENQA register for a period of five years.
ENQA produces publications dealing with the developments in the European quality assurance. This page contains the latest publications of ENQA in PDF Format. Paper copies can be ordered from the ENQA Secretariat.

Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area - 3rd edition (2009) (pdf) (04. Mar. 2005)

ENQA has produced, in co-operation and consultation with its member agencies and the E4 Group (ENQA, EUA, EURASHE and ESIB), this important report that was submitted to the European Ministers of Education meeting in Bergen in May 2005. The report was also presented to the Bologna Follow-Up Group on 1 March 2005.

The 3rd edition's Table of Contents numbering system has been restored for practical reasons; however, the text remains identical to the 2nd edition. The ESG have been translated into 12 languages, as follows (in alphabetical order):

- Albanian (doc) by the Albanian Accreditation Agency for Higher Education

- Albanian (doc) by the Kosovo Accreditation Agency

- Bosnian (pdf) by the European Commission and Council of Europe

- Catalan (pdf) by the Agency for Quality Assurance in the Catalan University System (AQU)

- French (pdf) by the Comité National d'Évaluation of France (now AERES)

- Galician (pdf) by the Agency for Quality Assurance in the Galician University System (ACSUG)

- German (pdf) by the German Rectors' Conference

- Hungarian (pdf) by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee (HAC)

- Romanian (pdf) by the National Alliance of Student Organisations in Romania.

- Russian (pdf) by the National Accreditation Agency of the Russian Federation (NAA)

- Slovak (pdf) by the Slovak Rector's Conference

- Spanish (pdf) by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain (ANECA)

- Ukrainian (pdf) by the British Council in Ukraine.

Download The External review report of the French Evaluation Agency for Research and Higher Education (AERES) with regard to the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, May 2010.