ANECA participates in ENQA's General Assembly, held in Dublin

Following the planned program, the 2023 General Assembly focused on the theme of recognition, exploring the latest policy developments and approaches to ensure tangible connections between quality assurance and recognition. In addition, the organization of interactive sessions provided an opportunity for participants to contribute to the message to Bologna Process ministers, to reflect on and further develop ENQA's specific review methodology, and to explore the results of its latest work. Among them, it is worth mentioning the Quality Assurance Fit for the Future (QA-FIT) project, which addresses as one of its main questions whether the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) are fit for the future and, if not, how to ensure that they are.

Precisely in Dublin, following the review conducted by ENQA in May 2022, to determine ANECA's compliance with European standards, ANECA has picked up the certification that reconfirms its membership to ENQA for another five years.

The Agency submitted its application for the fourth external evaluation of ENQA and EQAR in 2022, through a more specific review process (Targeted Review), implemented by ENQA and EQAR in 2021, to streamline and simplify these processes in agencies that already had experience.

ANECA was able to submit to this new evaluation model, since it has been working in accordance with the ESG since its approval, being already fully assumed and implemented in all programs for the evaluation of teaching and institutions. Thus, since 2007, three external evaluations have been successfully passed in accordance with these standards.

This process was a major challenge for ANECA, as it was one of the first European agencies to be evaluated using this new model. Thus, the participation in this innovative process meant an effort for the self-evaluation team. In addition, next year the agency will have to demonstrate, within the monitoring of ENQA and in the context of its evaluation process, that it continues to work along these lines, complying with the standards of quality assurance in the EHEA, for which the ENQA self-evaluation team is already working on the collection of information.