The MusiQuE Board met on 22-23 May at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg to discuss a wide range of issues, including:

Board composition

Following the recommendation by the Committee of the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) to have a full and permanent student representation on the Board of MusiQuE, the composition of the Board will be extended in order to add a student seat. The student will be recruited following a call launched to all AEC member institutions. More information as well as the actual call for nominations will follow.

Additional services added to MusiQuE’s portfolio

In 2016-2017, MusiQuE has tested new services that will be offered along with the ‘classic’ review services:
  • Review of research activities – based on a dedicated Framework for the review of research activities
  • Review of Pre-college institutions – based on the Standards for Pre-college Music Education (developed by AEC, the European Music Schools Union – EMU and the European Association for Music in Schools – EAS within the FULL SCORE project)
  • ‘Critical Friend’ approach – including annual visits by ‘critical friends’ combined with a lighter version of MusiQuE’s regular review visits
More information will follow in the coming months and MusiQuE’s Framework Document will be revised so as to include these new services and refer to these new sets of standards.

New Peer-reviewers on MusiQuE Peer-reviewers Register

Out of 16 applications received from representatives of AEC member institutions, 11 were accepted.

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.

For example:

  • in order to increasingly include in its Review Teams reviewers from the music profession, the Board has adjusted its template for peer-reviewers and planned the dissemination of the call for applications among members of the European Music School Union (EMU) and Pearle*-Live Performance Europe.
  • the Board and office started to work on a risk analysis and risk management strategy.
Small changes and improvements to MusiQuE’s procedures were also undertaken following the feedback received from reviewers and institutions reviewed in 2016-2017.

Consideration of review reports

The Board members scrutinised the review reports that have been finalised since the last Board meeting in October 2016. 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 in cooperation with ZEvA, Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, June 2016
2.    Programme accreditation, Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory, November 2016
3.    Programme review, University Mozarteum Salzburg and Tyrolean State Conservatory, December 2016
4.    Review of the research activities of the Royal Conservatoire, University of the Arts The Hague, 15-17 February 2017

Further development of MusiQuE’s activities in Europe

The Board discussed the various situations of higher music education institutions across Europe with regard to quality assurance and accreditation and took note of the interest expressed by a number of institutions to work with MusiQuE (see news item Update on MusiQuE’s review activities 2017-2018 and discussions with institutions and quality assurance agencies across Europe).