Annual Progress Report

ANNUAL PROGRESS REVIEW

Accredited institutions have to submit annual progress reports which would then be used to assess whether institutions have made further progress against the recommendations of the accreditation reports. The institutions that do not make satisfactory progress in two consecutive years will lose their accreditation status.

For the institutions accredited in 2008, the deadline for submitting those annual reports had been set as 31 July 2009. Only two institutions submitted their annual reports in 2009. While the term ‘annual report’ has a specific connotation and emphasises the periodicity of the report, the type of report that is needed to assess whether satisfactory progress has been made is very different in its emphasis. To ensure that this emphasis is understood well, NCAAA has developed guidelines to institutions about the specific aspects to be covered in the reports to demonstrate that they are making satisfactory progress (Appendix 2). NCAAA has also developed simple formats for preparing those reports and given orientation to institutions.  The term ‘annual progress report’ has been popularised instead of just ‘annual reports’.

The reports will be assessed initially by a panel of three. One panel can review all the progress reports. The panel can be chaired by an international reviewer and the Quality Officer of NCAAA can be a member. Ideally, the third member can be an external reviewer from Timor-Leste preferably from an industry/employer with a good understanding of the post secondary education and training sector. However, considering the fact that training for national reviewers has not begun, an alternate strategy for the year 2010 is necessary. The detailed implementation plan for the review of progress reports is given in a separate note. A face-to-face meeting of the panel may not be necessary for all institutions and the NCAAA staff will be involved in more on-site work. Provision for a site visit will be used by the panel in extreme situations where the panel decides to revoke the accreditation status or finds the progress made ‘unsatisfactory’.

At the time of writing this discussion note, most institutions have agreed to submit the annual progress report by 31 March 2010. An implementation plan is in place (Appendix 3).

• What is APR
• Why APR
• APR Process
• APR Guideline and Template