As an Accreditation Agency, our mission is to promote quality, transparency and comparability in education. But Quality is also the core value for the Agency to base its work on. The current version of the Agency’s quality assurance concept is based on Part III of the ESG-ENQA, GGP-INQAAHE, CHIBA principles, as well as the principles of total quality management (TQM), which are fundamental for ISO 9001. In accordance with its requirements the Agency has developed, implemented, maintains, and constantly improves the internal quality assurance system.
Commitment to quality is manifested in the following:
- Implementation of the Agency’s mission, values, ensuring regular review and evaluation of the Quality Policy in order to monitor and improve its efficiency;
- identifying key processes enabling the Agency to fulfillment of its tasks. The guarantee that all processes are identified, documented in regulatory documents and managed on a systematic way through the organizational structure is the QMS. Its full description can be found in the Quality Manual, containing direct or indirect links to other documents related to the quality in the Russian Register ( PP). They determine the responsibility of personnel for their work, which is specified in the procedures, manuals, regulations, instructions and other documents of the QMS. The agency also maintains documented information for the operation of the QMS to ensure that the RR processes are carried out as planned. The Agency has appointed the management, whose duties are to ensure the functioning of the Agency’s quality management system;
- Compliance with the principles of external evaluation when carrying out activities and making decisions under the jurisdiction of the Agency:
- consistency and integrity, strict adherence to accreditation standards;
- objectivity and construction of the report based on objective data, facts and a joint decision of all expert panel;
- impartiality;
- openness and transparency, all external evaluation procedures are available to interested parties;
- confidentiality of external evaluation data, restricting access to a number of documents and information obtained during the external evaluation until the completion of the final report of the expert panel;
- using reliable sources of information and data to determine quality and performance indicators;
- observance of the moral and ethical standards of the experts’ behavior, strict observance of the ethical code of the external experts;
- teamwork of the members of the expert group. More on this in Expert Ethics;
- Professional coordination and evaluation. To ensure the consistency of external audit procedures, the Agency appoints a coordinator who forms groups of external audits, conducts a technical analysis of self-assessment reports of educational institutions, controls external audits;
- Regular, independent and autonomous implementation of external quality assurance based on ESG, as well as periodic external evaluation of the Agency, confirming the compliance of the Agency’s activities with ESG and other international standards, regular publication of reports describing and analyzing the general conclusions of external quality assurance. On external guarantees of the quality of the Agency;
- Providing the stakeholders with objective and timely information on the website on issues related to the activities of the Agency;
- Improving the regular activities of the Agency by collecting feedback from employees and stakeholders on their satisfaction with the work of the Agency. Tools and mechanisms of external and internal feedback are necessary to improve the efficiency of the agency. It is easy to provide operational, methodological, informational feedback on the Agency’s website, incl. those with the complaints and appeals;
- Professional cooperation of the Agency with stakeholders; improvement of communication channels, development of high-quality relationships, participation of stakeholders in the activities of the Agency. RR continues to strengthen constructive cooperation with non-governmental and public organizations (student associations, professional associations and communities of employers, etc.), international partners;
- Ensuring professionalism and objectivity of processes, promoting the opportunity for employees to acquire a high level of knowledge, skills and competencies, as well as increasing the level of employee satisfaction and constantly encouraging them to participate in the activities aimed at improving the Agency. The management of PP ensures that all employees are competent and professional with adequate and appropriate education and constantly participate in professional development. Agency experts also participate in national and international quality assessment events. The professional behavior of external experts is regulated by a set of normative documents that define the ethical behavior of experts and their competence in external quality assessment procedures;
- Implementation and continuous improvement of internal quality assurance processes. For the analysis and monitoring of processes, we use such methods and forms as: current monitoring of the results of work at various stages of the provision of services in order to verify compliance with the established requirements for the service and compliance with the requirements of regulatory documents of the QMS of RR; selective control of the performance of work by means of a selective check of the practice of RR experts in order to assess the competence of experts and the effectiveness of the process of their training; internal audit of the QMS in order to establish that QMS meets the established requirements and is carried out in accordance with the Procedure for conducting internal audits of the quality management system of the RR; annual analysis of the QMS by RR management in order to assess the suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of the QMS to the requirements of consumers, the Policy and objectives in the field of quality, improvement opportunities; assessment of customer satisfaction at various stages of the service life cycle.
Therefore, in order to support and improve a high level of service management focused on meeting the requirements and expectations of consumers and stakeholders, the RR has developed, implemented, certified and is constantly improving a quality management system, which main pillar is a systematic approach to quality improvement using a cyclic model with elements: monitoring, evaluation, action, evaluation and feedback – so, the internal quality assurance system of the RR is based on the PDCA method (Plan, Do, Check, Act), which is a means to ensure that the main processes operating in the RR are identified, systematically documented in regulations, and managed through the RR organizational structure.