Agencia Nacional de Evaluación de la Calidad y Acreditación (ANECA)
ANECA is the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain. Article 32 of Organic Law of 20 December on Universities lays down that, by means of a Resolution by the Council of Ministers and subsequent to a report by the Universities Coordinating Council, the Government shall authorize the setting up of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation. ANECA was set up as a public trust on 19 July 2002.
Responsibilities
Scope of ANECA's activities:
- To enhance the improvement of university teaching, research and management activities.
- To foster Higher Education Institutions performance monitoring following objective and transparent processes.
- To provide public administrations with appropriate information for decision-making within the scope of their authority.
- To provide society with information about the achievement of universities’ aims.
Focus of accreditation
ANECA accredits Programmes. The accreditation is based on an assessment of compliance with ANECA's Accreditation Standards. The accreditation decision is taken by the University Council, which is a governmental body, based on ANECA´S assessment report.
Accreditation is applicable to bachelor, master and doctorate degrees. Legislation establishes two different stages in the accreditation process:
- An ex-ante accreditation, to verify that the design of the programme includes the criteria established by the Ministry of Education and Science.
- An ex-post accreditation, to certify that the programme has been accomplished according to the already approved conditions in the ex-ante accreditation process.
The consequences of accreditation
The result of the ex-ante accreditation, is the registration of the programme – in the Register of Universities, Centers and Degrees – and the official recognition of the degree. This means that the university concerned may offer the programme.
Negative ex-ante accreditation implies that the programme is not officially recognised and therefore, University is not allow to run it.
The consequence of the ex-post accreditation is the upholding of the official recognition of the degree for a certain number of years (normally six).
If the ex-post accreditation decision is negative, there is either a temporary suspension or a definitive revocation of the official recognition of the corresponding programme and therefore, its extinction.
Publication policy
ANECA publishes the accreditation reports.
Mutual recognition agreements
On December of 2007, ANECA signed three letters of intent regarding mutual recognition of accreditation decisions with:
- Commision des Titres d’ingenieur (CTI)
- Organ für Akkreditierung und Qualitätssicherung der Schweizerischen Hochschule (OAQ)
- Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie (NVAO)
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