QEC Functions
Government of Pakistan had established Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) through the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan in 2005 with the vision “To promote, enhance and assure the quality of higher education across HEIs in Pakistan”. To achieve its objective, QAA had guided Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to establish directorates of Quality Enhancement Cells (QEC). Therefore, QEC works under perview of the QAA of the HEC and plays the role of the guard for the quality maintenance. QEC reports to the Vice Chancellor and represent QAA within the HEI. Considering the importance of the quality, the HEC has defined following functions for QEC.
Functions:
- The QAA review quality assurance mechanism on annual basis through quantitative score card. QEC is responsible to complete all the assigned tasks for this yearly evaluation which include:
- University Portfolio Report (UPR): This report depicts the complete data of university from students to teacher. It shows university complete performance in numbers.
- Based on the UPR, HEI undergoes the Institutional Performance Evaluation (IPE); this is annual exercise for the evaluation of the university performance.
- Self Assessment Report (SAR): It is another important feature of the QEC. It includes internal monitoring of the HEI with the inclusion of the external review. Every program undergoes for SAR after two years. It initiates, guides and executes with the help of QEC, and reports are submitted to the QAA through QEC. The basic objective is to strengthen the department in its quality of teaching and research, also establish any other required resources which are deficient.
- Along with SAR, QEC is responsible to mentor and help teaching departments with the accreditation council. QEC is responsible to ensure the smooth working of department with the accreditation.
- QEC is responsible for the MS/MPhil and PhD review of the University. This is also a monitoring and evaluation exercise with both internal and external evaluators. The focus of this activity is to ensure the quality of the higher research degrees, their supervisor and research material.
- QEC is responsible for the smooth working of the QEC secretariat.
- QEC is responsible for the implementation of the QAA mechanism in the university.
- QEC is responsible to provide data to Higher Education Statistics (HES). Along with above mentioned QAA tasks, there are number of other tasks which are performed by the QEC. As QEC is the data repository of the University, therefore policy making institutes such as Higher Education Statistics of Pakistan annually contact QEC and collect data, which is further utilized in different policy making processes.
- QEC is responsible to arrange progress review meetings and monitoring visits.
- QEC is responsible to develop procedures for the following:
- Approval of new programs
- Annual monitoring and evaluation including program monitoring, faculty monitoring, and student’s perception.
- Student’s feedback
- Employer’s feedback
- Qualification framework
- QEC is responsible for the review of academic affiliations with other institutions in terms of effective management of standards and quality of programs. For this, QEC has developed its setup in all its affiliated colleges.
- QEC is responsible to develop quality assurance processes and methods of evaluation to affirm that the quality of provision and the standard of awards are being maintained and to foster curriculum, subject and staff development, together with research and other scholarly activities.
- QEC is responsible to ensure that the university’s quality assurance procedures are designed to fit in with the arrangements in place nationally for maintaining and improving the quality of Higher Education.
- At the wake of the Covid 19, QEC was responsible for ensuring the quality standard of the online teaching.