What are the proposed incentives and sanctions?

NZQA is proposing to implement a package of incentives and sanctions for education providers based directly on the level of education quality demonstrated through external evaluation and review (EER).

The initial mechanisms for incentives and sanctions are:

• the level of external scrutiny applied to applications[1] for programme approval, accreditation and consent to assess against unit standards
• processing time for programme (course) applications
• tenure of accreditations
• frequency of external evaluation and review

These initial mechanisms are expected to drive improvements in performance by providing incentives to improve educational quality and increase the range of sanctions available where the level of educational quality is below the standard expected. 

Education providers who demonstrate educational quality will gain greater freedom of action, lower compliance costs and performance-responsive quality assurance processes. Education providers who have not demonstrated educational quality can expect even greater scrutiny and limits on some of their existing activities until improvements in educational quality have been demonstrated.  

The quality assurance status of each TEO will be published on the NZQA website.

Consultation paper: Improving performance in tertiary education: using quality assurance incentives and sanctions for Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics, Wananga, Private Training Establishments and Government Training Establishments (July 2010) (PDF, 236KB).

[1] These would be subject to all requirements arising from the targeted review of qualifications