Project Qualtrack offers another approach to quality assurance and that is the quality rating of an institution. It is based on a set of criteria and a set of questions. The institution is supposed to fulfil all of them to be awarded a certificate of a quality-rated institution. However, there is also a set of extra questions that allow an institution to show some specific or unique features of their education process that deserve extra points in the form of a badge.
When an institution decides to get a rating, it files an application. The application is registered in the online system. The administrator confirms the application and launches the evaluation procedure and sets a timetable. It will also make available this methodology and assessment questions to the applicant institution.
The process has the following steps:
- An institution does a self-assessment through an online questionnaire, where the educational institution describes the state or processes in the given educational institution. It is important that the institution can prove that it fulfills the basic set of criteria and meets the standard quality requirements and some of the special criteria to earn a badge.
- External evaluators will review the evaluation by institution. On-site assessment will be carried out by a trained external evaluator who will visit the evaluated institution and check the veracity of all statements made in the self-evaluation questionnaire
- Customer evaluation will be taken into consideration and the evaluator will verify the key statements from the self-evaluation questionnaire among the customers of the given educational institution
- Final evaluation. After receiving the report from the Evaluator, the rating institution will have collected all the data and findings necessary for making the final conclusion, ie whether the evaluated institution has met all the criteria and if it receives any special badge
- The evaluation process is completed with awarding a certificate. The certificate is valid for 3 years. It can be published on the website, always with the year of issue. The reassessment will be conducted under lighter conditions (to be specified). There will be national registries of certified/rated institutions. The registries will be published also on the Qualtrack website.
One of the basic goals of the rating is to separate high-quality educational institutions from those with insufficient quality. The pilot in the Czech Republic showed that the rating is also a motivational element for the institutions to improve their processes and standards. Therefore, it is necessary to support the educational role of the rating towards educational institutions, which will ultimately lead to an improvement in the quality of services provided to the customer.
In order to run these processes correctly and in a standardized form, training for the institutions and the assessors will be provided.