The MusiQuE Board met on 24-25 October 2017 at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne to discuss a wide range of issues, including:

STRATEGIC AND BUSINESS PLAN

The Board has started a risk analysis and is now developing a risk management strategy while working on a strategic and business plan for MusiQuE. MusiQuE’s costing system is also being adjusted.

IMPROVEMENT OF MUSIQUE’S PROCEDURES

The Board continued to discuss and plan concrete actions in order to follow the recommendations addressed by the External Review Team that evaluated MusiQuE in July 2015, by the EQAR Committee and by MusiQuE’s external evaluator. MusiQuE is about to welcome a student member to its Board and it is working on its financial sustainability.

Small changes and improvements to MusiQuE’s procedures were also undertaken following the feedback received from reviewers and institutions reviewed in 2016-2017. In 2018, the Framework Document will be updated and revised, in order to include all new services offered by MusiQuE and to clarify certain elements of the review procedures.

CONSIDERATION OF REVIEW REPORTS

The Board members scrutinised the review reports that had been finalised since the last Board meeting in May 2017. For reports of Quality Enhancement Reviews, the consistency with, and relevance to, the review standards was considered. For accreditation procedures, the Board checked if the justifications listed by the review team for each standard supported the proposed level of compliance with that standard. The Board then took the final formal decision on the accreditation of the institution/programme/joint programme based on the proposal of the Review Team.

The reports of the following procedures were considered:

  1. Programme Accreditation, Bachelor of Music, Conservatorium Maastricht (Site visit in June 2016)
  2. Pilot institutional review, School for Young Talent, University of the Arts The Hague, Royal Conservatoire, The Netherlands (Site visit in November 2016)
  3. Institutional review, Vorarlberger Landeskonservatorium (Site-visit in January-Feb. 2017)
  4. Institutional review, Mahidol College of Music, Bangkok (Site-visit in June 2017)
  5. Programme Accreditation, Performing and Visual Arts Programmes and Music Programmes, Kazakh National University of Arts – undertaken in cooperation with EQ-Arts (Site-visit in March 2017)

MUSIQUE PEER-REVIEWERS TRAINING SESSION

The final preparations were made for the training session for Peer-reviewers to take place on 8-9 November 2017 at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. More information about MusiQuE Peer-reviewers training sessions can be found here.

THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF MUSIQUE’S ACTIVITIES IN EUROPE

  • MusiQuE is exploring the situation of higher music education institutions with regard to quality assurance and accreditation at national level to determine in which countries it can be of assistance to the institutions and in which way.
  • National quality assurance agencies are being approached to explore opportunities for joint procedures. MusiQuE was represented at the General Assembly of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA)  in Sèvres, France, on 26-27 October and at the 12th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) in Riga, Latvia on 23-25 November and meet with representatives of national agencies from all over Europe.
  • Several institutions in various European countries have requested exploratory meetings with MusiQuE to take place during the AEC Annual Congress.