Armenia

Armenian National Center for Professional Education Quality Assurance, Foundation (ANQA)

Contact Information

Street name: 22 Orbeli Street
Postal code and City: 0028 Yerevan
Country: Armenia
Phone/Fax: +37410229145
E-mail: info@anqa.am
Website: http://www.anqa.am/
Presentations:

ANQA
International partnerships

Contact person: Ruben Topchyan
Function of contact person: Director
Founding year: 2008
Legal status:
Foundation
International Links and membership:
ENQA, EQAR, INQAAHE, CEENQA, CHEA CIQAC

ANQA was established in November 2008 under the Government Decree (No. 1486) and started its functioning in March 2009 as a Foundation.

ANQA has been set up as a small and flexible organization, with qualified staff to perform a wide range of responsibilities. The organization has the following key elements: The highest governing body is the Board of Trustees, which consists of 12 representatives from different groups of stakeholders. It is formed for a period of 4 years. The Accreditation Committee is an independent, collegial, permanent body. The Accreditation Committee is the highest quality assurance body within ANQA designed to be solely responsible for making decision on institutional and programme accreditation and making suggestions to ANQA for the improvement of the accreditation mechanism. The Director is taking the leadership of ANQA. ANQA has three functional departments: Policy Development and Implementation division: responsible for the development and implementation of ANQA policies and procedures, the production of supporting regulatory documents, and ensuring stakeholder communication, Institutional and Programme Accreditation division: responsible for operating the external evaluation processes in TLIs and providing the Accreditation Committee with data and documents to make consistent accreditation decisions. Secretariat: responsible for providing technical assistance to ANQA in external communication as well as in communication with ANQA Accreditation Committee.

ANQA also supports the “Students’ Voice” programme (launched in 2011 by ANQA). The “Students’ voice” programme strategy is: to increase students’ awareness on educational reforms, to develop the student-experts’ database and provide student-experts for accreditation processes through continuous trainings and to establish a students’ network from different TLIs.

ANQA implements quality assurance processes through institutional and programme accreditation in preliminary, vocational and higher educational institutions.

ANQA’s objective is to support tertiary level institutions to create a quality culture in accordance with the legislation of RA and European Standards and Guidelines (ESG).

ANQA fosters the assurance of tertiary education quality standards and ongoing quality enhancement, supporting the autonomy and accountability of TLIs.

While performing its activities, ANQA represents public interest, strives to increase the competitiveness of TLIs and their graduates and is guided by the following principles:

  • Public trust. This principle is based on democracy and its idea of the public holding real power and determining its own future. By its activities, ANQA guarantees public trust to tertiary education.
  • Social cohesion and responsibility. One of the main goals of education is socialization, i.e. development of respect for norms, values, and principles of democratic society, which will ensure social cohesion. In this regard, the role of quality assurance is to increase the awareness of the society regarding its right to receive good-quality education, which is typical for democratic societies. A sustainable and independent system of quality assurance will safeguard the society against low-quality education by making the services of tertiary education publicly transparent.
  • Equity. ANQA strives to ensure equal opportunities for every social stratum through its approach to all the stakeholders of tertiary education, particularly equal treatment for public and private institutions.