Section 34 of the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) (Amendment) Act 2019 was commenced on 8th November 2019. Section 34 of this Act amends Section 80 of the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) Act 2012, which authorises the charging of fees for certain services provided by Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), the national agency responsible for qualifications and quality assurance in further education and training and higher education in Ireland.
The 2012 Act requires that quality assurance underpins the relationship between QQI and the education providers with which it engages. The 2012 Act ensured that the existing quality assurance relationships that providers had with QQI’s predecessor agencies were maintained until providers could agree new quality assurance arrangements with QQI. The term ‘re-engagement’ is used to describe this transition. Public providers have a statutory obligation to re-engage with QQI while private and independent providers re-engage on a voluntary basis.
The re-engagement process allows providers to demonstrate their capacity to provide and maintain, on an ongoing and sustainable basis, the infrastructure required to develop education programmes consistent with national standards and to assess the achievement of stated learning outcomes by learners. It will happen only once for each provider. Thereafter, the provider will have to undergo periodic review of the effectiveness of its quality assurance procedures.
QQI works with a diverse range of public and private providers in higher and further education and training as well as providers in the English language education sector. The level of QQI fees to be applied for the purposes of re-engagement were subject to extensive deliberation to ensure that they are applied equitably. These fees reflect a graduated system based on the provider’s scope of provision including a provider’s highest level of award on the National Framework of Qualifications and the volume of a provider’s validated programmes.
All of the public higher education institutions and the Education and Training Boards have now completed the re-engagement process with QQI. The re-engagement process for private and independent providers commenced in 2018 and continues apace. At this stage of the process it would not be fair, equitable, objective or justifiable to introduce a fee waiver scheme for re-engagement.
