The following thoughts were prompted by a circular from the QAA's Peter
Milton to heads of HEIs (20th April), which accompanied forms asking for
further information about Subject Review visits in 2000-01.

Dr Milton confirms that subjects will be reviewed under the existing
Subject Review procedures 'albeit slightly modified', and adds that the
development of subject benchmarks will 'provide a useful background' to
this exercise.  Furthermore, he acknowledges that these subject
groups/departments will not have seen the draft benchmarks for their
subject before preparing their self-assessments, but advises that the
benchmarks will not be used to make judgements about standards.

I would have thought that, however competent the Subject Specialist
Reviewers are (and however well they are trained), they will find it
difficult to ignore these benchmarks when making judgements about the
quality of provision.  This, effectively, departs from the principle of
evaluation against the subject provider's own aims and objectives on
which Subject Review is fundamentally based.  Given this, I would
contend that you cannot have a transition phase between Subject Review
and Academic Review with published benchmark standards hovering in the
background and that, in England and NI, there should be a clean switch
from Subject Review to Academic Review in January 2002.  At the very
least, such a transition will be unfair to the subjects being reviewed
in 2000-2001, in comparison with those covered in 1998-2000.

I'd be interested if colleagues have any similar or different reactions.



William



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