Give a brief description of the quality assurance system applied in your country.

In the Russian Federation, the quality assurance system for HE is described by the RF Law “On Education”, no. 3266-1 of 10 July 1992, and the Federal Law “On Higher and Postgraduate Professional Education” (“O vysshem i poslevuzovskom professionalnom obrazovanii”), no. 125-FZ of 22 August 1996, in the form of three main procedures: licensing, attestation and state accreditation of HEIs, as well as in the Regulation “On state accreditation of higher education institutions” (approved by RF Government directive no. 1323 of 2 December 1999) and the Regulation “On

licensing educational activity” (approved by RF Government directive no. 796 of 18 October 2000).

The external quality assurance system includes:

- Standard norm of licensing, state educational standards, criteria and benchmarks for state accreditation;

- self-evaluation procedures, external reviews, accreditation decisions and broad publication of results;

- bodies and organisations involved in quality assurance procedures.

The quality assurance system is formed at the national (federal) level and covers all HEIs (state, municipal, private, as well as institutes, academies and universities).

Questions of ensuring quality are discussed in section 3, ‘Quality assurance,’ of the National Report submitted in Bergen.

The licensing procedure is performed every five years to control observation of the established normative standards.

Attestation includes self-evaluation for each programme which produces graduates, and for the HEI as a whole. Self-evaluation is performed by a self-evaluation teem in the HEI, which studies all the aspects of the activity of the HEI and takes into consideration the opinions of faculty, students, graduates and employers. Self-evaluation reports for a period of three months prior to the experts’ visit

to the HEI are published on the websites of the HEIs.

Self-evaluation report is verified by a peer review teem of no more than 10 persons, during a site visit.

A positive decision makes it possible for an HEI to undergo state accreditation. A report on the results of the peer review will be published from 2006-2007 onwards on the website of NAA.

Based on the results of state accreditation, the HEI receives a certificate of state accreditation, with a list of accredited programmes and a period of accreditation (no more than 5 years), under which the institution has the right to issue State recognized diplomas.

Information about accredited HEIs and programmes is published in a Registry, an annual reference book and on the site of NAA (www.nica.ru). The accreditation process and the process results are described in detail in a journal, Accreditation in Education, which is published 8 times per year, with a print run of 3,000 copies.

At the current time a sufficient infrastructure of agencies involved in the quality assurance system has now been formed in the country:

- the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Research;

- the Guild of Experts (created in June of 2006);

- the Accreditation Board: a public and state body, the members of which are heads of education institutions, and representatives of public organisations and federal executive agencies;

- the National Accreditation Agency. The assessment of the content and quality of student education is also performed with the assistance from the Information and Procedural Centre for attestation of HEIs.

The quality assurance system has also included Internet-based testing and student survey technologies, developed and used since 2005 to conduct self-evaluation and external review.

At the current time, the state accreditation procedure uses criteria and benchmarks that assess the conditions, organisation and level of results of educational activity.

The accreditation criteria are sorted into two groups. The first group—expert criteria —determines the type - Higher Education Institution. The second group determines the kind; these criteria may have benchmarks established for Institutes, Academies, Universities. Benchmarks are calculated using statistical data collected annually from all HEIs in Russia into a Central State Accreditation Database.

The criteria and benchmarks are reviewed approximately every five years.

The system for accrediting HEIs was introduced in 1997. Ninety-eight percent of state HEIs and 63% of private HEIs have already undergone the accreditation procedure. Many of these have already undergone repeat accreditation.

Russia is represented in the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) by the National Accreditation Agency. Based on analysis of application in compliance with the ENQA requirements on 23 May 2006 the Steering Committee resolved to accept the NAA as a candidate for membership in the Association.