Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA), the Kingdom of Thailand and Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), the United Kingdom agreed to reinforce their collaboration by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on external quality assurance. The MOU was signed by Dr.Nantha Nguantad, the Acting Director of ONESQA and Ms.Vicki Stott, the Acting Chief Executive of QAA, which took place between two locations at the ONESQA office in Thailand and the QAA office in UK.

The agreement builds upon a Letter of Intent previously signed between both organisations in July 2019. QAA also supported training for ONESQA external quality reviewers in September 2020 - demonstrating the positive impact of interagency co-operation for reviewer professional development.

Through the MOU, QAA and ONESQA aim to further their collaboration on shared areas of activity, recognising their shared objectives and comparable missions in the assurance of quality in higher education. The agreement will lead to enhanced information sharing between both parties about developments in their respective countries’ higher education system in order to strengthen UK-Thai higher education partnerships and support the development of transnational education (TNE) links between higher education institutions.

Through the agreement, QAA will support our International Insights members by sharing intelligence on the regulatory context in the Kingdom of Thailand. QAA and ONESQA will also collaborate on matters of mutual interest, such as academic integrity.

Vicki Stott, QAA’s Acting Chief Executive said: ‘The signing of this agreement signals the importance of the partnership between QAA and ONESQA. We look forward to working with ONESQA to explore opportunities for collaboration between QAA members and higher education institutions in the Kingdom of Thailand.’

Dr. Nantha Nguantad, ONESQA’s Acting Director said: This collaborative agreement represents a significant step forward for the strong friendship in promoting the interchange of information and understanding each other’s quality assurance in higher education. We are very pleased to continue working with QAA and to have such an engaging UK-Thai higher education partnership and the development of TNE in higher education for the two countries.

Altogether, ONESQA is very pleased to see this MOU in place as it paves the way for great synergy between our two entities, especially information exchange on QA, staff development and capacity building for external reviewers.

Retrieved the news from https://www.qaa.ac.uk/