The necessity for Mauritian Higher Education institutions to internalise quality assurance and develop the ownership of the quality assurance process was highlighted by the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, on Monday morning.
“The quality of Higher Education is one of the most critical and pressing conditions for developing a Higher Education system,” she declared.
The Vice-Prime Minister was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Harmonisation of African Higher Education, Quality Assurance and Accreditation phase 2 (HAQAA2) Dissemination and capacity building training workshop, at Hennessy Park Hotel, in Ebène.
The HAQAA is an initiative that has been established to support the development of a harmonised quality assurance and accreditation system at institutional, national, regional, and Pan-African continental level, through the realisation of the African Union endorsed Pan-African Quality Assurance and Accreditation Framework. It is funded by the European Union Commission, in the context of the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership. HAQAA Phase 2 is intended to build upon, upscale and promote the results of Phase one, which was implemented from 2016-2018.
The five-day workshop brings together heads of public and private higher education institutions and parastatal bodies. It will focus on the capacity building for a shared understanding of internal quality assurance systems, based on the African Standards and Guidelines for quality assurance in Mauritian Higher Education institutions. The resource person is the former Director of the South Africa’s Accreditation Council of Higher Education, Professor Kethamonie Naidoo.
According Mrs Dookun-Luchoomun, quality was indeed a multidimensional concept that touched not only quality assurance procedures, but also accountability, accessibility, employability and public responsibility for higher education. “It is a way to build trust among stakeholders,” she averred.
Moreover, the Minister encouraged participants of the workshop to take full advantage of knowledge that would be shared and more importantly, to incorporate the knowledge into their respective institutions. While underlining that the training would serve to strengthen and consolidate further the internal quality assurance culture in the system, she affirmed that the concept of harmonisation would guarantee the quality and standard of programmes on offer.
The importance of accreditation was also underscored by Mrs Dookun-Luchoomun, who stated that accreditation was not only a label of trust in higher education institutions, but it was also the seal that their programmes met the requirements of the market and their graduates were ready to contribute to the country’s economic growth. She recalled that in Mauritius, all public and private institutions had their programmes of study duly accredited from the regulatory body, the Higher Education Commission.
Furthermore, the Vice-Prime Minister was of the view that Mauritius was well on the way of achieving the objective of turning into an education hub. However, she was adamant that as a Small Island Developing State, Mauritius could not afford resource dispersal. “The scarcity of resources called for additional effort towards innovative sustainability and growth of the higher education sector; such local actions in institutions will have a favourable echo being aligned with the continental agenda,” she added.
