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A total of 60 medicine and other health science courses in the country have been suspended from admitting new students for a period of two to three years after the institutions teaching them “failed” in accreditation assessments, according to a team of national and international experts.
Some higher education institutions (HEIs) are trying to harass experts from the National Institute for Evaluation, Accreditation and Recognition of Higher Education Research (INAAREES) who are involved in the second stage of the external evaluation process for medical courses and other health sciences to obtain accreditation even though they cannot teach them.
“In any case, apart from some hidden moral and labour harassment of evaluators by some universities, there is no record of anything dishonourable happening in the process currently being carried out, so we can conclude that it was a success”, the Minister of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Paula Simões de Oliveira, revealed yesterday in Luanda.
The assessment was conducted from June 11 to 14 this year following the implementation of the National Higher Education Quality Assurance System and covered 115 medicine and other health science courses taught in the country.
Of the courses inspected, 63 were taught in Luanda and 52 in other provinces. According to the government official, the process was carried out by an independent external evaluation committee, which included national and international experts of high academic and professional reputation, as required by law.
He assured: “After the work was carried out, they prepared a report based on the evidence collected and in accordance with the indicators, criteria and standards used to evaluate the relevant courses”.
The Minister explained that INAAREES is preparing an implementation report precisely to identify the positive points and constraints recorded in the above process.
For the governors, whatever the results achieved in evaluating the curriculum, the most important thing is that teaching their LES will from now on become part of an experience that undoubtedly constitutes a turning point in the way we think about and conduct higher education.
“Therefore, whether the result leads us to accreditation or not, it must be accepted on a ‘fair playing field’ basis and, in this sense, it is the responsibility of higher education institutions to correct the weaknesses identified in external evaluations”, he appealed.
He then added that “for this, it is necessary to have competent teams in place to introduce the necessary improvements so that in the next two to three years, they can change the performance to improve the functionality of a particular course”.
Nevertheless, Paula de Oliveira urged higher education institutions, and INAAREES in particular, to repeatedly express their permanent commitment to quality as a fundamental value that guarantees the credibility of their actions and the trust that stakeholders place in them during the evaluation process.
Assessment focuses on international standards
In his opinion, if this is the case, it will not be long before the results of this process will be translated into gains for the subsystems and the country can regularly include its best LES in international rankings.
Taking advantage of the gathering of the “main players of the higher education subsystem”, the Governor drew attention to the implementation of routine but essential actions to achieve the goals set in the National Development Plan (PND) 2023-2027, within the context of quality assurance in higher education.
Paula Simões de Oliveira said that among the contradictions that higher education institutions received in relation to interim reports, regarding the second phase of evaluation actions, some statements were accepted and others were not accepted because they lacked meaning and justification.
Paula Simões de Oliveira recalls that during the first phase of the external evaluation process, which took place in October 2023, 30 courses in medicine and other health sciences were evaluated, of which 7 were conditionally accredited and the remaining 23 were not accredited.
“This subsystem has about 1,300 courses, which should be evaluated in 2027 under the PDN 2023-2027, and we can say that we still have a long way to go, but we already have a successful beginning phase like the first one,” he stressed.
He then added, “We believe that through everyone’s hard work and dedication, it is possible to achieve the goals set in the PDN 2023-2027”.
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