Bologna, a process with two decades of history

In the 1990s European States launched various quality assurance actions such as the Experimental Evaluation Program (1992-1994) and the European Pilot Project (1994) followed by the ‘Recommendation on European cooperation to guarantee the quality of higher education’ (1998).

In the last quarter of the 20th century there was increasing interest from European countries to establish systems to guarantee the quality of the teaching given in higher education institutions.

The Bologna Declaration, signed in June 1999, marked a decisive point in the implementation of a quality culture by including among the principles of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the promotion of European collaboration in quality assurance with the aim of establishing comparable criteria and methodologies.

Successive developments in quality assurance in the creation of the EHEA came through the subsequent biannual declarations of the European ministers in Prague 2001, Berlin 2003, Bergen 2005 (where the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, prepared by the ENQA, were presented) and in London 2007. The next meeting will take place in Louvain in April this year.

The above events resulted in the creation of the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) in 2008 by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), the European Students’ Union (ESU), the European Universities Association (EUA) and the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE).

Quality assurance in Spain

In Spain, institutional evaluation activities began to develop in the 1990s with the Experimental Evaluation Program of University Quality sponsored by the Universities Council (Consejo de Universidades), which was followed shortly afterwards by the EU’s Pilot Project.

In 1995, the Universities Council approved the Institutional Evaluation Program of University Quality, which in the same year led to the National Plan for Evaluating University Quality.

In 2001 the 2nd Universities Quality Plan Council was launched and transferred one year later to the recently created Spanish quality evaluation and accreditation agency, ANECA.

The accreditation process of the new qualifications

Organic law 4/2007 of 12 April established a new educational structure to bring Spain’s teaching system in line with the EHEA (Royal Decree 1393/2007 of 29 October).

This Royal Decree gave ANECA responsibility to establish the procedures, protocols and guidelines for verifying official qualifications as well as for evaluating study plan proposals. The agency developed a set of actions in order to comply with the Royal Decree (VERIFICA program).

In order to launch a new qualification, universities, through their independent powers, must now design their study plans and send them to the Universities Council, which will check that the proposal complies with the protocols and then sends the study plan to ANECA to issue the evaluation report, which confirms that it meets the criteria established under prevailing legislation. This is an obligatory and essential report.

With the favourable report from ANECA, the Universities Council issues a positive verification decision and notifies the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the University and the corresponding autonomous region, which will be responsible for authorising the implementation of the qualification.

The procedure also contemplates the possibility of appealing against the verification decision to the President of the Universities Council.
The process is complete when the Ministry sends the proposal to the Council of Ministers to officially authorise the qualification. This is followed by its registration in the Register of Universities, Centres and Qualifications (RUCT).