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● Psycho-motor skills
● Self-appraisal and reflection
● Problem solving
● Communication skills
● Planning and managing one’s own learning
● Interpersonal skills, working with and relating to others in a professional setting
● Career management personal skills
● Numerical skills
● IT skills
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Source: Adapted from internal Bournemouth University guidelines, Academic Quality and Quality (ADQ)
Guidance Note QA 19.
Table 3: Indicative headings of transferable skills.

[ by Tourism at 3-15-2009 22:01 edited ]

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Institutions have traditionally included an element of external participation in their internal
quality assurance systems. This is now explicitly required by the QAA Code of Practice
(QAA, 2000a). These complex systems are usually managed by a dedicated department
within the institution. The main components of internal quality assurance are:

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This is a process by which the programme team (i.e. those responsible for the development
and delivery of a programme or course leading to an award) appraises its own performance.
Traditionally, annual monitoring reports include a critical overview, an action plan
and supporting evidence (often included as appendices) such as:
● external examiner’s reports;
● student feedback (Brookes, 2003);
● statistical data on student entry levels, progression and achievement;
● staff monitoring of delivery of each individual unit/module;
● appropriate minutes from programme committees, teaching team meetings, etc.
Given that the role of quality assurance is to enhance the quality of provision, the overview
should be objective, evaluative and candid. It should recognise the positive achievements
of programmes as well as problems. The evaluation should refer to the previous action plan
noting outcomes and identifying continuing issues. Other points of reference may include
recommendations at evaluation panels, internal audit of the previous annual report and
external reviews. In the case of tourism there is no national professional body which
accredits qualifications, so the main source of external review will be the QAA. The recent
TEDQUAL certification offered by the World Tourism Organization provides an international
reference point for tourism programmes.
To be effective, annual programme monitoring must be integrated into the institution’s
quality assurance system. It is formally reviewed, initially by the School, Faculty or
Department responsible for delivery of the programme and then at an institutional level to
provide the checks and safeguards to ensure that reports are acted upon.

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Periodic review of programmes typically takes place every 5 or 6 years to ensure that they
remain current and valid in the light of developing knowledge and practice and that the
intended outcomes of the programme remain appropriate. Documentation produced for
this review will normally include:
● a self-evaluation document presenting a critical review of delivery over the past 5/6
years. Such documents can help form the basis of self-evaluation for QAA subject
review at a later date (see institutional audit below);
● programme specifications that must provide details of teaching and learning methods,
assessment, subsequent career opportunities and how the programme relates to the qualifications
framework (QAA, 2000b, 2003);
● unit specifications incorporating unit learning outcomes, content and selected reading;
● resource documentation including statements of both physical and staff resources to
support the programme.
Approval and review of programmes must involve appropriate persons who are external to
the design and delivery of the programme (Precept 3, QAA, 2000a Code). Appropriate persons
here include academic peers from other disciplines (and other departments) within the
university and external advisors qualified to provide relevant information and guidance.
These will most likely be academics from other institutions and practitioners from the
industry. Potential outcomes from a validation or review panel are:
● the programme is approved without amendment;
● the programme is approved with conditions and/or recommendations;
● the programme is not approved.
A robust system of internal hurdles for programme proposals should make non-approval
rare. Approval with conditions and recommendations is overwhelmingly the most common
outcome. Conditions have to be met before the programme may enrol students whereas a
recommendation by the review panel must be considered and responded to by the programme
team, but not necessarily adopted. Programme design, approval and review should
be linked to the process of annual programme monitoring (QAA, 2000a) and indeed the
first annual report following the review will respond formally to the panel recommendations.
The QAA also argues that “where practices for the initial approval of programmes
are rigorous and effective, subsequent monitoring and review is likely to be relatively
straightforward” (QAA, 2000a, para 10, Section 7).

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“External examining provides one of the principal means for the maintenance of nationally
comparable standards within autonomous HE institutions” (QAA, 2000a, para 6,
Section 4). An expert seminar on external examining organised by the Subject Centre that
includes Tourism argues that “the role of external examiner will vary between institutions
and courses” (LTSN, 2004, p. 4). However, in the author’s view the role is clear, namely:
to assess, comment on and ideally confirm that the standards achieved by students are
appropriate for the marks awarded and hence the degree awards made, as set out in the
QAA Code of practice (Table 4). Significant variation does occur in the approach and practices
adopted by institutions and some give external examiners additional responsibilities
(QAA, 2000a).
The external examiner’s responsibilities can be met by scrutinising an appropriate sample
of student output. Clearly, the sample has to be representative and most institutions have
established clear rules on this. It is common practice for a university to require all first class
papers and all fail papers to be made available plus a selection of others. Practical arrangements
vary, some deliver the sample of work to external examiners whilst others arrange for
the external examiners to sample the papers at the institution, usually the day prior to the
board that meets to consider examination results. External examiners may have relatively
little interaction with the course itself. An annual visit for the examination board at the end
of the academic year provides an opportunity for examiners to meet programme teams.
There are criticisms of the system. Many examiners:
● do not have the opportunity to see delivery of the course. Their views on the quality of
provision and the student experience can only be based on student output and supporting
documentary evidence;
● do not have the opportunity to meet students. It is not uncommon for an external examiner
to meet no students undertaking the programme during their whole term of office;
● have insufficient time to view the sample of work. There is scope to forward assessed
coursework and possibly dissertations earlier but time scales between the examination
period and the examination board leave limited time to review students’ scripts;
● will find significant overlap in the timing of examination boards in different institutions,
which means that external examiners have limited time for the work.
The external examiners are usually invited to provide a short verbal report to the examination
board and to submit their written report some 4–6 weeks later. From 2005, summary
reports from external examiners are publicly available.

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An institution should require its external examiners, in their expert judgement, to report on:
(i) whether the standards are appropriate for its awards, or awards elements, by reference
to published national subject benchmarks, the national qualifications frameworks,
institutional programme specifications and other relevant information;
(ii) the standards of student performance in those programmes or parts of programmes
which they have been appointed to examine, and on the comparability of the standards
with those of similar programmes or parts of programmes in other UK higher
education institutions;
(iii) the extent to which its processes for assessment, examination, and the determination
of awards are sound and have been fairly conducted.
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Source: QAA (2000a). Precept 1, Section 4.
Table 4: Role of external examiner.

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Institutions have criteria for nomination and appointment of external examiners. Usual procedures
require the school or department to nominate an individual who is appointed on the
basis of a number of criteria as follows: current post, employer and professional/teaching
experience; subject knowledge including scholarly activity, publications, etc.; internal
examining experience; external examining experience; and number of other external examiner
posts currently held.
It may be self-evident, but all external examiners must at some stage have had a first
appointment. So QAA stress that the criteria for appointment should be “sufficiently inclusive
to allow for the nomination of external examiners with little or no prior experience of
external examining” (QAA, 2000a, precept 4, Section 4). The majority of external examiners
are academics from other institutions, but there are no formal criteria as to what constitutes
appropriate expertise. Clearly, experience gained from internal marking is
appropriate. The Subject Centre that includes tourism proposes course leadership or equivalent
as an appropriate prerequisite for external examining as course leaders will have
experience of subject standards, administration of examination boards and of periodic
review and validation (LTSN, 2004). One approach adopted by many institutions is to
appoint “first time” external examiners to larger courses where they can be mentored by
more experienced external examiner colleagues.
A further issue is the desire for courses to appoint practitioners from industry as external
examiners. There are clear benefits in this for a vocational degree programme, not least their
experience of current industry practice and their ability to judge how effectively the programme
is preparing graduates with appropriate skill and knowledge for careers in the industry.
However, such practitioners may feel they have insufficient background knowledge of HE
to judge academic work. Again practitioner examiners can be mentored by external examiner
colleagues and many institutions also operate induction programmes. Notwithstanding this
support, the time required often acts as a deterrent to accepting appointments.
The Code of Practice includes a number of safeguards to avoid conflicts of interest for
external examiners. These include restrictions in length of appointment (usually 4 years),
the number of external examiner posts held (usually a maximum of 2) and avoidance of
reciprocal appointments between the school/department of two institutions (QAA, 2000a).
The financial reward for external examiners is fairly nominal. Current fees range from
around £250 per year upwards with £300–£350 as the norm for undergraduate programmes.
Whilst external examining can be valuable in career and personal development
for academics which attracts applicants, this level of remuneration is not attractive to practitioners
whose participation will be motivated by philanthropic considerations.
A combination of the increase in the number of undergraduate tourism programmes and
the increasing development of niche degrees is resulting in a shortage of available examiners,
especially in emerging subject areas (LTSN, 2004). In response the Subject Centre
has developed a database of potential external examiners in tourism.

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The external quality assurance system has developed over time. On its formation in 1997,
QAA inherited a system of Subject Review. The most comprehensive external review of
Tourism HE in England was the universal Subject Review undertaken between September
2000 and April 2001. Tourism was included in the area of provision “Hospitality, Leisure,
Recreation, Sport and Tourism”. This was a major undertaking with visits to 61 HE institutions
and 48 FE colleges over an 18-month period. Some 135 subject specialists were used
to undertake these visits, all of whom had undertaken a rigorous residential training course.

The Process
The process, set out in the Subject Review Handbook (QAA, 2000d), involved a 4-day visit,
(Monday lunchtime to Thursday afternoon) with the purpose of gathering and testing evidence
of the quality of education. The central feature of review was the Self-Assessment Document
(SAD) in which institutions set out their aims and objectives under six aspects of provision
(Table 5). The outcome of the visit was a Subject Review Report that incorporated an overall
judgement on the quality of the provision and a graded profile for each of the six aspects of
provision based on the descriptors given in Table 6. Each aspect carried equal weight and a
grade 2 or better meant that that aspect “makes at least an acceptable contribution to the attainment
of the stated objectives” (QAA, 2000d, p. 8). Although a profile with all aspects graded
2 or better meant that the provision was “approved” in reality a grade 2 was interpreted as a
poor result by institutions as it meant reviewers found more than one major shortcoming. Any
profile with three or more grade 2s resulted in the call for an improvement plan from the QAA.
A grade 1 constituted a failure with the provision subject to further review with 1 year.

The Results
QAA summarised the findings from the 109 visits in a Subject Overview Report (QAA,
2001a). This provides a largely positive picture as presented in Table 7. The subjects are
achieving their main aims and objectives, although with a need to address a number of
important “sector-wide issues” (QAA, 2001a, p. 2). Only three institutions were designated
“quality not approved” although a further three were approved but had a profile of
three grade 2s. Five institutions achieved the top grade of 4 in all six aspects of the provision.
Two of these have significant tourism provision. High quality is reflected in the average
grade of 3.4 awarded across all aspects and visits.
One very noticeable pattern was the higher grades awarded to the provision in the 61
HE institutions compared to that in the 48 FE institutions. All three of the providers where
quality was not approved were FE institutions as were those with three grade 2s in their
profile. This discrepancy was perhaps expected in some elements of the provision, such as
in Learning Resources (LR). Libraries in HE institutions typically have a wider range of
resources than those in FE institutions. But even in aspects where they might have been
expected at least to match HE institutions, such as in Student Support and Guidance
(SSG), where they could have benefited from small numbers of students, they also tended
to achieve lower scores. One point that needs to be noted is that the 48 FE visits were all
to colleges directly funded by the government funding agency, the HEFCE and operating
courses independent of HE institutions. The FE colleges that offered university-validated
awards under a franchise arrangement, usually with some type of associate college status,
were visited as an element of the provision of the HE institution and the judgements on
such provision are included in the HE grade profile.

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1. Curriculum Design, Content and Organisation
2. Teaching Learning and Assessment
3. Student Progression and Achievement
4. Student Support and Guidance
5. Learning Resources
6. Quality Management and Enhancement
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Table 5: Aspects of provision.

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Scale points
1. The aims and/or objectives set by the provider are not met; there are major shortcomings
that must be rectified.
2. This aspect makes an acceptable contribution to the attainment of the stated objectives,
but significant improvement could be made. The aims set by the subject provider are
broadly met.
3. This aspect makes a substantial contribution to the attainment of the stated objectives;
however there is scope for improvement. The aims set by the provider are substantially
met.
4. This aspect makes a full contribution to the attainment of the stated objectives. The
aims set by the subject provider are met.
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Table 6: QAA grade descriptors.