Providers and partners

What is self-assessment?

Self-assessment is arguably the most powerful means for a tertiary education organisation (TEO) to understand and improve its educational performance. Self-assessment is a systematic process of data-driven self-reflection. It is directed towards coherent and clearly articulated goals to inform decision-making and operational practices.

Self-assessment across an organisation has four main components:

Systematic data gathering
Robust data analysis that leads to valid conclusions
Reflective processes that involve all people in the organisation
Decision-making for ongoing improvement connected to the outcomes of a self-reflective process.

TEOs generate and gather a large amount of data. Analysing and making sense of this data enables better decision-making. Good self-assessment is only possible when a range of people in the organisation are involved, e.g. teachers, non-teaching staff, students and other stakeholders such as employers.

Self-assessment enables a tertiary education organisation to find out:

what outcomes, learners are achieving and how well
the value of the outcomes to stakeholders including learners
the effectiveness of processes in contributing to these outcomes.

By identifying strengths and weaknesses, a TEO can develop and implement an improvement strategy resulting in actual, worthwhile improvements.

Key features of effective self-assessment

NZQA does not prescribe how to conduct self-assessment. However, any process should be comprehensive, authentic, transparent, robust.

The focus of your processes should be on:

Outcomes	what is being achieved and the value for learners, employers and the wider community
Needs assessment	the extent to which TEOs systematically determine and address the needs of learners, employers and the wider community
Processes and practices	the processes and practices that help to achieve outcomes, e.g. the primary importance of good teaching, or the role of effective learner support services
Learner achievement	the impact of educational provision on learner progress and achievement
Using what is learned	evidence-based conclusions and decision-making that will feed into strategic and business planning, leading to positive change
Actual improvement	the extent to which improvements are relevant and worthwhile