Ms. Jacqueline Moniquette, official of University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Quality Assurance Unit (QAU), has said training of University of Guyana (UG) scholars to establish their own QAU will be held before year-end.

Moniquette, who was recently here on a two day visit through the UG-UWI joint working group, had conducted a situational analysis of the local university.

Speaking at a press briefing at the Education Lecture Theatre (ELT), Turkeyen Campus, the UWI official said the local QAU will seek to ensure UG programmes and graduates are of reputable quality and standards.

“The unit will help to project UG as a university of choice by proving to stakeholders it is offering the best,” she contended.

Moniquette said she had met with a wide cross section of UG staff to get an idea of the state of things, and how their views can feed into the training that will be undertaken by UWI.

The training, she emphasised, will be tailored to best suit the needs of UG in helping it to move forward as expeditiously as possible.

She noted UWI, for the past several years, has had an active quality assurance unit which has been conducting reviews of its academic programmes as well as quality assurance audits.

The UG QAU will take some time before it comes into operation and will collaborate with UWI when necessary, she said.

“All higher education institutions are engaging in this process, because higher education is a business, and this competitiveness is the driving factor in UWI itself setting up such as system,” Moniquette related.

The Quality Assurance Officer also underlined focus will be placed on academic reviews of local programmes and this will include lecturers’ reviews of their various disciplines and consultation with key stakeholders.

The review team, the official said, will examine the curriculum for relevance, its ability to meet stakeholders’ needs, the national agenda, and bench marks for best practice, among other factors.

She stressed other systems that feed into the academic programme will also come under scrutiny, such as the library, managerial and academic processes.

These reviews, the UWI representative said, are wide-ranging and will contain recommendations for improving the quality of the university’s programmes.

She disclosed the review process will be accompanied by a quality audit which looks at all the procedures and processes in place to ensure a quality review, and would be conducted every four or five years.