Working visit of NAA’s representatives to the UNESCO Headquarters

On October 27, 2017, a meeting was held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris devoted to the organization of regional meetings within the framework of the up-coming World Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education. The Conference will be held on November 21-23, 2018 in France and can gather from 700 to 1,000 participants.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the Swiss Agency of Accreditation and Quality Assurance (AAQ) - Christoph Grolimund (newly elected President of ENQA) and Baptiste Fuez; Erika Soboleva representative of the Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education and Career Development; representatives of NAA - Lemka S. Izmaylova and Murad Shishkhanov; Head of the UNESCO Section for Higher Education Peter Wells; Programme Specialists - Hassmik Tortian and Tara Nasrollahi. As a result of the meeting, the final dates of the two regional meetings were agreed upon with due consideration of the work plans of all interested agencies and associations:

• for the countries in the Western Europe, North America and Canada (hosted by the Swiss Agency AAQ, Geneva, February 16, 2018)
• for the countries that are part of the Eastern Europe and Asia (the host party is NAA and AKKORK, Moscow, April 23-24, 2018)

An agreement was reached with UNESCO and partner agencies that for the sake of writing a joint Scoping Study for the regions of Eastern Europe / Asia and Western Europe / North America they will use a draft program of the meeting that is structurally and substantively complete. The main topics of the sections are:

1. Quality Assurance and the Diversification of Provision in HE
2. The Role of QA in Fostering Sustainable Development
3. Relevance of External QA: Accountability and Improvement
4. QA: Internationalization and Mutual Recognition