FAQ

Advancing towards Cluster Accreditation (CA)

17 August 2020

National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE) organized an online workshop on the subject of cluster accreditation with the representatives of Georgian HEIs on August 10, 2020.

Tamar Makharashvili, Director at NCEQE, introduced the agency’s draft plan regarding the issue of cluster accreditation. The main advantages of changing the existing system of Program Accreditation (PA) were discussed and some of the current challenges were pointed out during the meeting. Together with the HEI representatives, the director of the agency explored analytic findings of their feedback over the issues of cluster accreditation, as the aforementioned draft plan had been mailed to the Georgian HEIs prior to the workshop. Moreover, the agency’s staff answered all the questions coming from the HEI representatives regarding program accreditation. NCEQE and HEIs reached the agreement to maintain the cooperation in order to further develop the process of accreditation and implement the cluster accreditation.

Through the system of cluster accreditation, HEIs will be able to accredit the groups of programs instead of separate educational programs. The programs could be grouped in a cluster based on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and detailed fields within the Classification of Fields of Study (CFS). Implementing cluster accreditation will be helpful for the extensive and simultaneous 3-level assessment of HE, to identify and set the Sector Benchmarks. Additionally, it will limit the time, financial or other resources consumed by the accreditation process in terms of individual programs, both for NCEQE and HEIs.

Advancing towards Cluster Accreditation (CA)