Quality Assurance Statement

Nelson College London has undergone an Annual Monitoring for Educational Oversight Review in September 2018 by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). The QAA report confirms that the College is ‘making acceptable progress to monitor, review and enhance its higher education provisions’ since the previous visit held in September 2017. The College has prepared and submitted to the QAA an action plan in response to the findings of the report.

The QAA final report is available at QAA report

QAA action plan October 2018: Annual Monitoring Review 2018-2019

How We Ensure The Quality Of Programmes At Nelson College London (NCL)

1. Nelson College London is committed to the continuous enhancement of the quality of learning opportunities provided. The College has deliberately taken a strategic and evidence-driven approach to improving the quality of learning opportunities.

2. The College has robust systems in place that generate information indicating the strengths of the learning opportunities that are provided to students. This information is systematically collated, summarized, evaluated in the form of reports and discussed in relevant College committees.

3. The College has in place a formal Enhancement Strategy, which will ensure the College has continuous improvement initiatives in place. The College has four types of enhancement initiatives in place for continuous improvement, these include:

- Incremental Enhancement

- Reactive Enhancement

- Strategic Enhancement

- Thematic Enhancement

4. The College also produces an annual College Review and Enhancement Report (CRER) to collate, record and evaluate all necessary information relevant to the academic programme delivery and produces an action plan detailing improvements to be made. The CRER report draws on various action plans, recommendations and good practices identified in internal reviews. This report is presented for approval to the Academic Board and is received by the Board of Governance. This process permits good practice evidenced in one programme to be spread across the College.

5. Programme Leaders compile Review and Enhancement Process (REP) reports for all programmes annually. These reports include a summary of student enrolment and progress, student feedback, action points from Standards Verifiers, teachers’ observation reviews, and action points from peer reviews.

6. The module leaders prepare the Module Evaluation and Monitoring Reports (MEMR). These reports look at the submission, pass and success rates of the module. To ensure that students’ performance is tracked at programme and module levels, the College has introduced benchmarks which are discussed within the MEMRs. Any module which does not meet the threshold benchmark is flagged up by the module tutor within the module monitoring and evaluation report. Similarly, benchmarks have been established on students’ performance within a year using indicators such as success rate on assessment attempts and student success rates on enrolments. To track the progression from year 1 to year 2, benchmarks have been established for progression rates, completion rates and award rates.

7. To ensure the quality of the programmes delivered, the College engages staff and students in a bespoke quality framework, through a multiplicity of committees which are responsible for the development and enhancement of the quality of the programmes. These committees typically review the academic standards and learning opportunities offered. The College carries out termly internal observation of teaching and learning, Peer Reviews, annual staff appraisals and considers feedback from all its students.

8. Feedback from students on the programmes delivered by the College is important, hence the College has in place various methods to collect student feedback. Feedback from students is taken from the NCL Student Survey and Module Evaluations Forms. The college also has student representation within the Committee structure as student Representatives are in the composition of the following committee meetings: Student Representative Committee, Programme/Course Committee, Academic Board and the Board of Governance.

9. The College receives annual visits by External Examiners or their equivalent appointed by awarding organisations across all programmes. The College responds appropriately to the findings of their reports.

10. The College assesses the effectiveness of its quality assurance and enhancement frameworks by monitoring relevant performance indicators, including external examiners’ reports, quality reports produced by awarding bodies, the outcome of peer reviews, and student satisfaction survey results.