Cycle 6 academic audit

The Guide to Cycle 6 is available here. A shorter, introductory guide is also available here.

The sixth cycle of academic audit for New Zealand universities has 10 components.  Cycle 6 will:

• Maintain an internationally referenced, cyclical, peer-review model of external quality assurance.
• Maintain a high-trust, enabling, relationship between the universities and AQA that recognises and respects universities’ responsibility and accountability for quality as well as AQA’s Terms of Reference and independence.
• Maintain the scope of academic audit on teaching, learning, support and outcomes for students.
• Build on and refresh the Cycle 5 academic audit framework (guideline statements) and further emphasise outcomes and the use of evidence.
• Incorporate a thematic enhancement topic agreed by all universities that will address an issue that is both a strategic priority for universities and of national importance. The enhancement theme topic for Cycle 6 is “Access, outcomes and opportunity for Māori students and for Pasifika students”.
• Audit universities 7-8 years after their Cycle 5 audit.
• Include students or recent graduates in audit panels.
• Amend the audit delivery method so that Panels spend more time together initially and that time spent at the university can be more targeted and require meeting with fewer individuals.
• Develop audit reports to comment on outcomes and enhancement initiatives, as well as processes.
• Include a public report on a university’s response to recommendations. A mid-cycle follow-up report on Cycle 5 recommendations will be introduced.

Further information on the development of Cycle 6 and its components can be found here, and further information on the Cycle 6 Enhancement Theme can be found here.

Key dates for Cycle 6 Academic Audit are:

The indicative audit schedule for New Zealand universities is: