June 2022 | Lao PDR and the Philippines

European Union Support to Higher Education in ASEAN Region (EU SHARE), a programme by EU and ASEAN to strengthen regional co-operation and enhance the quality, regional competitiveness and internationalization of ASEAN higher education institutions and students,in partnership with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Germany conducted the agency review exercise “the Reviews of External Quality Assurance Agencies in ASEAN” to enable AQAN members with consolidated EQA structures to benchmark their QA systems with the regional principles (ASEAN Quality Assurance Framework:AQAF).

The Office for National Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) has been a member as well as an executive committee member of the ASEAN Quality Assurance Network (AQAN) since 2008. In addition, ONESQA had joined the Pilot Reviews of EQAAs in ASEAN which implemented in 2017 and received a QA Trophy to recognize as an AQAF aligned agency since 31 October 2018. ONESQA was the first external quality assurance agency in ASEAN to undergo the agency review under this programme. At present,EU SHARE is currently operating the Reviews of EQAAs in ASEAN in Phase 2 which scheduled for 2021-2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all of the review activities, such as the preparatory training for EQAAs and assessors, were shifted to be virtual activities in order to comply with the situation as well as the COVID-19 restrictions in each country.After many countries have eased their COVID-19 restrictions, EU SHARE therefore resumes the EQAAs review and also coordinates with ONESQA, as the AQAN executive committee member and theAQAF alignedagency.

In this regard, LCdr.Dr. Kittiya Evans, the Deputy Director of ONESQA, was invited by EU-SHARE to serve as the Chair of the review panels for site visits. Each panel comprised with the experts from Europe and ASEAN. The site visits took place on 13-14 June 2022 for DEQA (the Department of Legislation and Education Quality Assurance), LPDR and 20-22 June 2022 for CHED (the Commission on Higher Education), Philippines.