International Relations

The legislation that regulates the Agency’s activities imposes a number of moves that promote its internationalisation:

a)The external evaluation integrates the mandatory participation of experts from foreign or international institutions, in significant numbers;

b)The Revision Council must integrate persons with experience in similar foreign organisations;

c)The Agency is responsible for performing the actions inherent to the insertion of Portugal in the European system for the quality assurance of higher education;

d)The Agency must integrate the Register created in the scope of the European quality assurance for higher education.

In order to correspond to the emphasis given by the legislator to internationalisation, the Agency has decided to create a Scientific Council, integrated by experts with well recognised international experience that will promote at the end of each year a debate on the annual progress of the Agency and will present a report with criticisms and suggestions to improve the Agency’s procedures. This Council is composed as follows: 

  • David Dill, Professor of Public Policy, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Don Westerheijden, Senior Researcher, CHEPS, The Netherlands
  • Bjorn Stensaker, Research Professor, University Oslo, NIFU-STEP
  • Mary Henkel, Professor Brunel University, UK
  • Guy Neave, Researcher at CIPES, consultant WB, OECD, EU, Swedish Academy
  • José Ginés-Mora, University of Valência and Institute of Education (University of London)

After contacts with the ENQA’s secretariat, the A3ES has been accepted in 2009 as an associate member. Under the new statutes of ENQA, presently A3ES is an affiliate member.

A3ES is also a member of the European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA) since June 2012.

 

A3ES has furthermore been accepted as member of the CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG),  a forum established by CHEA – Council for Higher Education Accreditation (United States) for bringing together people, ideas and resources from around de world to tackle issues ranging from defining quality and addressing rankings to combating degree mills and accreditation mills.

A3ES is also member of IMHE (Institutional Management in Higher Education), an OECD programme, being also a member of its Board. IMHE runs a number of important programmes, including “The Assessment of Higher Education Outcomes” (AHELO), “Supporting Quality Teaching in Higher Education”, “What Works in Higher Education Management” and “Innovation, Higher Education and Research for Development” (IHERD).