Parliamentary Hearings

G.N. Motova, Deputy Director of the National Centre for Public Accreditation, spoke at the Parliamentary Hearings on the issues of public accreditation in the State Duma on October 14, 2013. Deputies of the State Duma, the Federation Council, the Public Chamber, representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation as well as more than 100 people from academic and professional society and accreditation agencies took part in the hearings.

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G. N. Motova came up with the proposals to improve the procedure of independent assessment of the quality of higher education and to return the concept “public and professional accreditation” alongside with (or instead of) the concept “professional and public accreditation” into the Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation”.

“It is not the change of terms and not the wordplay”, G.N. Motova mentioned. “It is the change of attitudes and principles of the whole procedure: a lot depends on the bodies, either the associations of employers or public and professional organizations, which conduct accreditation. On the basis of which standards, educational or professional, will HEIs be assessed? Will the assessment of the learning outcomes be conducted with the focus on the assignment of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees or professional qualifications?”

The second focus was made on the need for the development of strict requirements for accreditation agencies conducting accreditation procedures and the experience, reputation, recognition and resources of these agencies. Otherwise there is a major risk of the appearance of a large number of “accreditation certification factories” alongside with “diploma issuance factories”.
Finally, entering the integration process of harmonization of the structure and content of the educational process within the common European space of higher education in is inevitably necessary to take the next step and to harmonize the quality assessment mechanisms on the basis of the European Standards of Quality Assurance approved in 2005 by the Conference of Ministers of the countries participating in the Bologna Process. Positive experience of European countries can be applied in the formation of internal and external quality assurance systems.

The report from the Parliamentary Hearings will be published in the earliest 67th issue of the “Accreditation in Education” journal.

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