Language and learning back in focus

VEXED questions of academic quality control and English language standards are back in the spotlight.

VEXED questions of academic quality control and English language standards are back in the spotlight.

Draft standards for learning outcomes are expected this week from the Higher Education Standards Panel under former vice-chancellor Alan Robson.

And ground rules for an audit of English language proficiency will be put out mid-month by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

How teaching and learning might be measured, and vetted by a government agency, had been the subject of long and anxious debate.

Controversy over English language standards goes back to 2006 research by Monash's Bob Birrell who showed overseas students with weak English being graduated by universities and recruited as migrants in the hope of remedying skill shortages in the professions.

Last year TEQSA said its first two "thematic" audits would cover English proficiency and third party set ups - for example, where a university farms out course delivery to some other entity, thereby creating potential risks.

This month the agency will release the terms of reference for its audit of English language standards.

English is also expected to feature in draft standards on learning outcomes to be issued this week by Professor Robson's panel.

Professor Robson said learning outcomes was chosen because it was probably the area least well covered in the threshold standards.

The panel is revising those threshold standards by starting with the question, what characterises a reasonable provider.

The other draft standard to go out for comment this week covers course design.

Professor Robson doubted the panel would go on to formulate a stand-alone set of "non-threshold" learning and teaching standards.

That had been the intention but it led to difficult questions about the relationship between those learning and teaching standards, which would not be regulated by TEQSA, and some sub-set of minimum requirements for academic quality within the threshold standards.

Professor Robson said English language principles devised by the federal education bureaucracy, in part as a reaction to Dr Birrell's work, could be included as a "reference point" for providers.

Those principles were helpful but too detailed to be used within the threshold standards.

"We as a panel have the view that fewer standards are better than more standards, so providers will concentrate on the more important things," he said.