In 2024, ANQA’s monitorings of the HEIs focused on the annual quality assurance plans of the HEIs and the activities aimed at enhancing the academic programmes. This was highlighted during the April 11 meeting with the HEIs’ quality assurance managers. Touching upon the reforms of the institutional accreditation process, ANQA Director Ruben Topchyan emphasized that the HEIs with institutional accreditation should conduct an internal audit of all their academic programmes, involving an external expert. The need for internal audit of academic programmes is also fixed in the Accreditation Committee’s decisions. "We trust institutionalized programme management. However, it's important to recognize each AP is unique and centralized decision-making may not always work at the programme level," noted Dr. Topchyan. Dr. Topchyan highlighted the importance of programme accreditation and the AP review in terms of international recognition as well. ANQA is an ENQA member, registered on EQAR, and results of ANQA's accreditations are available in DEQAR. Programme accreditation stands as an important prerequisite for ensuring continuous recognition of the education provided by the RA HEIs within the EHEA. The discussion also covered the possibilities for the implementation of cluster programme accreditation, the internal audit of the HEIs' APs, and other issues concerning the credibility of results. ANQA expressed its willingness to support HEIs in the interpretation of criteria and standards and the involvement of an external expert. Reference was also made to:
- annual plans for the HEIs’ quality assurance activities, including their highlights, result evaluation and use in the decision-making process;
- cooperation between the AP manager and the quality assurance specialist;
- the importance of lesson planning, applied methodology and existing best practices.
An agreement was also reached to introduce the HEIs’ initiatives for enhancing academic programmes and their results in the near future as part of “Academic Programme Enhancement: Presenting Best Practices” workshops.