IQAA ON THE WAY TO AN INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED INSTITUTION
Marko Marhl
Chairman of the Quality Assessment Committee, University of Maribor, Slomškov trg 15,
SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia.

Quality assurance (QA) represents a permanent care about the processes in a given organization or system with a clear aim of establishing and maintaining an environment for healthy developing of the system, preventing mistakes, avoiding problems, and delivering solutions to all the stakeholders involved in these processes. The QA is important in all fields of our life; however, it is of particular importance in education. The QA in education represents a continuous process of improvement of learning and teaching in order to provide an outstanding student experience by ensuring the quality of curricula and the corresponding infrastructure for learning and teaching.

Education is one of the most important fields for all nations in order to educate the future generations, and as such the quality assurance in education is crucial in every country. The Republic of Kazakhstan as one of the fastest growing states in the middle of the Eurasian continent, the state with a lot of natural resources and talented people, and hence the state with enormous potential, has realized the important role of quality assurance in education.

I was visiting the Republic of Kazakhstan several times, and I was always happy to realize that the care for development of intellectual potential of young generations by improving the quality of education is one of the main priorities of the state policy. During the years of my visits, the national education system has consistently been modernized through the introduction of national and international standards of quality assurance in education. The key role in this process play the Kazakh quality assurance agencies in support of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan that has formed several agencies and governmental-based committees that look over the quality of higher education system in Kazakhstan.

In accordance to my experience, the Independent Kazakh Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (IQAA) is the key quality assurance authority in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The IQAA was set up in 2008, and in the 10-years of its tradition, the IQAA has carried out accreditations of a huge body of higher education institutions in the Republic of Kazakhstan. As an international expert I was participating in several accreditations of Kazakh universities, and my personal experience with the IQAA accreditations of universities is that the IQAA provides a highly professional service of assessing the whole educational environment, a complete monitoring of the infrastructure, assessing the level of scientific achievements and the work of academic and non-academic staff, interaction of the university with employers, as well as students and graduates.

Today IQAA as a well-established and recognized accrediting agency in Kazakhstan. According to my personal view, the strongest hallmark of this organization is its broad openness and international orientation. In all the quality assurance procedures conducted by IQAA, important role is given to external experts, who bring additional value by contributing their knowledge and skills. Since the very beginning of its work, IQAA has involved, besides the students, staff, and employers, also the international experts in all of its peer reviews, which has allowed to involve all stakeholders in quality assurance procedures as well as to establish strong connection to international studies and expertise.

The IQAA has followed Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) that were adopted by the Ministers responsible for higher education following a proposal prepared by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). The international orientation of IQAA and the hard work of all the people being involved in this organization was recognized by opening the door to enter the European structures, such as ENQA and EQAR.

During the evaluation process, when IQAA was applying for membership in ENQA, I was honored to be personally involved as an external expert in this process of evaluation, and I had a chance to present the excellent work that I was facing during the accreditation processes I was participating in, and on this basis, I had a chance to fully support the full membership of IQAA in the international association ENQA. I appreciate the expertise and the hard work of the whole staff of IQAA, and I do believe in bright future of the IQAA.

At the occasion of the 10th Anniversary, I cordially congratulate all the representatives of IQAA and all the collaborators of this organization for the excellent work being done in the last 10 years, and I wish that IQAA has excellent further development and a brilliant prosperity in the future.