Northern Consortium UK (NCUK) is owned by 11 public sector UK universities. NCUK offers UK undergraduate pathway and degree completion programmes backed by robust quality assurance. It is extremely important for NCUK to deliver an excellent quality of education as our delivery represents the credibility of our owner universities. NCUK has an experience of more than 22 years in delivering programmes based upon UK academic standards in an international environment.

NCUK Academic Support and Quality Assurance

NCUK has an academic committee, based in NCUK’s head office in Manchester. The members of this committee has been drawn from its owner universities. The NCUK academic committee is responsible for providing quality assurance guidelines, academic support, and monitoring delivery standards.

  • The NCUK academic committee sets quality assurance and delivery guidelines which are required to be followed by all NCUK delivery centres.
  • There is a standard curriculum and syllabus for each NCUK Year 1 and 2 modules prepared by the NCUK Exam Board.
  • NCUK Year 1 assignments and examination papers are initially developed by the module leader and then approved by the NCUK Academic Committee. Furthermore, NCUK Yr 2 assignments are also initially developed by the respective module leaders and then approved by the NCUK Academic Committee
  • NCUK Yr 2 exam papers are prepared and developed by the NCUK Academic Committee.
  • All the NCUK Year 1 and Year 2 assignments and examination papers are initially marked by the teaching faculty under the guidance of module leaders. Final evaluation and grading of all examination papers is done by the NCUK Academic Committee.

NCUK Academic Audit Structure

NCUK’s academic management structure and quality assurance framework operates on three tiers:

  • The Delivery Partner’s ‘internal’ academic management and quality assurance structure operates at the first tier. Each NCUK Centre has an ‘Academic Manager’ who is responsible for maintaining the NCUK academic standards. This may include continuous interaction with the faculty members, evaluating the delivery standards of lectures, and monitoring other NCUK academic guidelines.
  • NCUK’s own academic management and quality assurance processes provide the middle tier. NCUK academic committee conducts pre-commencement audits of all NCUK Delivery Centres before inception of each NCUK annual year. Academic Auditors from NCUK Academic Committee visit from UK to Pakistan to conduct annual audits for a particular academic year. In order for each NCUK Centre to sustain, it has to pass the audit process. This whole process ensures that students studying in the NCUK programme are being prepared for a UK qualification as per the UK academic standards.
  • On the third tier, an independent External Auditor, appointed by and reporting directly to the Northern Consortium’s Management Council, has general overview of the arrangements through the periodic audit of systems, procedures and standards.

The principle is that each tier audits the activity of the next. NCUK audits the Delivery Partner and the External Auditor audits NCUK in respect of academic standards and quality assurance.

Recognized Academic Quality of NCUK Owner Universities

University education in the UK has a world-wide reputation for quality and excellence. There is no official government league table of universities in the UK – each university is responsible for the quality and standards of its programmes. However there are many independent organizations that regularly inspect and accredit UK universities and their programmes.

Quality Assurance Agency

NCUK operates its quality assurance in line with the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) code of practice for collaborative provision. The QAA is the UK agency responsible for assuring the quality of university degree provision in England and Wales

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) is responsible for regulating standards and quality for UK higher education. It produces a Code of Practice which provides institutions with guidelines on managing academic standards and quality. It also carries out independent inspections of universities to see if they are reaching their quality targets. Reports are produced from these Institutional Audits and these are published on the QAA website at www.qaa.ac.uk

All UK partner universities who receive NCUK students are audited by the British Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) to ensure that they are operating to the highest possible standards. Similarly, NCUK awards are potentially auditable by the QAA, these awards are generally considered by Partner Universities as articulation arrangements. NCUK programmes must match QAA standards, and in order to achieve this, we have an NCUK Quality Assurance Team who check and monitor the programmes taught by our Delivery Partners. The quality assurance team coordinates and draws upon the work of a number of examiners and auditors appointed from both partner and non-partner universities. Additionally, NCUK is subject to quality audit by an External Auditor who reports directly to the Northern Consortium Management Council.

Research Assessment Exercise

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is conducted every four to five years. It evaluates the quality of research conducted by British universities and measures this against international standards of excellence. The RAE enables the higher education funding bodies in the UK to distribute public funds for research selectivity on the basis of quality.

In the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008), the NCUK owner universities performed exceptionally well. Taking into account the amount of research and the variety of subjects covered, four NCUK owner institutions are in the top 15 and every one of the university has some specialist research area ranked as world leading. Full results from the latest RAE are available on their website at www.rae.ac.uk