Africa-Press – Lesotho. Lesotho through Council on Higher Education (CHE) hosted the fourth Southern African Quality Assurance Network (SAQAN) yesterday. The conference is themed: “Quality Assurance in Higher Education: Theories, perspectives and practices geared towards attainment of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in the Southern African region and beyond.
Present at the three days conference were representatives from Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, international organizations and representatives from local institutions.
CHE Chief Executive Officer, Mrs ‘Makotelo Motseko said the conference aims to bring together quality assurance practitioners and researchers in the SADC region and beyond to share experiences, best practices and tackle issues on promoting culture of quality assurance in higher education sector.
“The network helps to coordinate institutions of higher learning where we share how to overcome some challenges that we come across as institutions of higher learning.
This also helps us to improve where necessary. Through the conferences we monitor our progress based on other countries that we are enrolling under the same Programmes with,” Motseko said.
The Minister of Education and Training, Professor Ntoi Rapapa confirmed the government of Lesotho is committed to supporting higher education and in particular quality assurance.
“Programmes are reviewed for accreditation by the Council on Higher Education on an on-going basis, and institutional quality audits are done on a regular basis.
In recent times we have developed comprehensive policies and guidelines geared towards improving quality of higher education as well as achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education,” Rapapa said.
He noted that, some of the SAQAN activities, including the conferences have made significant contribution in the quality of the tools that CHE has been able to develop.
“As a country we are currently working towards finalizing the Lesotho Qualification Framework, and my office is committed on ensuring that it goes through all the necessary approvals by the end of this year,” underlined the Minister.
He urged all SADC member states to join the network together with their tertiary institutions. He said the need for quality assurance in higher education in the SADC region is now higher than any other time in history.
According to Rapapa there are pressures for public institutions to increase enrolment in the face of diminishing financial support from governments. “This has serious implications on quality.
Higher education is being traded as a service in which private providers are playing an important role to increase access and relief public institutions,’’ he added.
