Renewal of Registration and Renewal of Accreditation 17 June 2016

Renewal of registration and renewal of accreditation

Report on renewal of registration of Australian Guild of Music Education Inc and the renewal of accreditation of the Bachelor of Music

TEQSA has agreed to orders made by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal under which the registration of Australian Guild of Music Education Inc (AGME) as a higher education provider was renewed for a period of two years to 10 June 2018 under subsection 36(1) of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act) in the provider category of higher education provider.

These orders also involve the renewal of the accreditation of AGME's Bachelor of Music for the same period under subsection 56(1) of the TEQSA Act, and the imposition of five conditions on the registration of the AGME as a higher education provider under subsection 32(1) of the TEQSA Act:

Condition 1:

By 10 October 2016, and every four months thereafter until the submission of AGME's next renewal of registration application, AGME must provide TEQSA with a report, approved by AGME's Committee of Management, describing AGME's progress against its Distance Learning Plan

Condition 2:

AGME must develop, and provide to TEQSA no later than 10 October 2016, a procedure to systematically collect, review, benchmark and act on student performance data. That procedure must provide for AGME to collect and report upon student attrition, student progress, course completions and grade distributions data, and to analyse that data by reference to:

1. entry path (comparing students admitted under each entry pathway)
2. credit awarded (comparing students admitted with no credit awarded with students admitted with credit for up to a third of the course and between a third and two thirds of the course)
3. study load (comparing students who take less than a full-time study load, exactly a full-time study load and greater than a full-time study load, where full-time study load is equal to 120 credit points in a calendar year)
4. study mode (comparing students who undertake a component of their course by distance with those who study entirely face-to-face) and
5. student achievement in similar courses at other higher education providers.

Condition 3:

AGME must use the analysis required by Condition 2 to develop a strategy to address the underlying causes of student attrition or failure rates in AGME's higher education course. This strategy must be approved by AGME's governing bodies and provided to TEQSA in its next renewal of registration application, together with evidence of a regular and systematic review cycle which uses an analysis of the most recent available data to inform the ongoing revision of the strategy and its effectiveness.

Condition 4:

AGME must:

1. undertake the external review and benchmarking activities identified in its Course Review and Quality Assurance Policy
2. ensure that these activities inform AGME's ongoing reviews of its higher education operations, and
3. provide TEQSA with a report, describing those activities and how those activities have informed AGME's reviews of its operations, in its next renewal of registration application.

Condition 5:

AGME's next renewal of registration application must include a document which describes the basis on which AGME's Academic Board is satisfied that each member of AGME's higher education teaching or leadership staff has qualifications or experience consistent with the requirements of the Threshold Standards and with AGME's own recruitment policy.

Main Reasons for Decision

After reviewing the material submitted by AGME, TEQSA was satisfied that AGME meets the Threshold Standards. However TEQSA considered that there remained a number of risks related to AGME's capacity to meet the Threshold Standards in the future. On this basis, TEQSA considered that the period of registration and accreditation and the conditions to be applied to AGME's registration are consistent with the basic principles for regulation in Part 2 of the TEQSA Act.

• The broad issues led TEQSA to this view include:

  a) Management of AGME's distance education operations

  b) Monitoring and acting on comparative student performance data

  c) The use of benchmarking to quality assure its course of study and higher education operations

  d) The number, qualifications, experience and expertise of academic staff who teach or tutor the course of study and the extent to which these are appropriate to the course of study and mode of delivery.