On 9 September 2009, the National Center for Professional Education Quality Assurance foundation (ANQA) organized a meeting with the representatives of the state universities to discuss the mechanisms, as well as drafts of quality assurance standards and procedures developed by ANQA. The fundamental approaches that ANQA has developed for promoting quality evaluation and accreditation were presented during the meeting. The HEIs representatives approved these approaches and made several comments and suggestions.
The main issues having been discussed at the meeting were accreditation and self-evaluation processes, educational state standards and National Qualifications Framework (NQF). The representatives of the Arts institutions mentioned that while developing the National Qualifications Framework the peculiarities of arts professions should be taken into account: unlike other professions, the qualifications in the field of arts are difficult to be clearly defined. However, it was unanimously accepted that establishing and integrating the National Qualifications Framework in the development of quality assurance system is of utmost importance. All the participants of the meeting highlighted the importance of deliberately considering the economic growth and labor market demands of our country while developing the National Qualifications Framework.
ANQA seeks collaboration with the tertiary education institutions as it derives from the mission of the agency to improve the quality of professional education in Armenia. For that very reason, feedback from its stakeholders is highly appreciated, and by the end of September a full package of the standards, criteria and procedures will be send to HEIs anticipating their comments and proposals regarding the developed documents. After cooperative discussions those documents will be redeveloped and adopted.