EER enquiry involves a number of processes for collecting and analysing information about a TEO’s performance.
On this page
4.1 The enquiry process
4.2 The enquiry guidelines
In the course of its enquiry, the EER team will always check that data is relevant, accurate and complete. It will also confirm how the data has been used, and why.
Wherever possible, a TEO should present NZQA with ‘processed’ (rather than ‘raw’) data. That is, any data submitted should already have been collected, interpreted and analysed by the TEO as part of its organisational self-assessment.
For example, if you state that ‘our completion rates are 80 per cent’, you should also indicate how you know this claim is correct and why you believe this is a good (or modest or excellent) outcome.
If the evaluation team is forced to explain or ‘correct’ the TEO’s own data, this in itself points to a serious performance or self-assessment weakness in the TEO.
What is ‘data’?
Data refers to all information on the performance or quality of a TEO.
Data can be ‘soft’ (student testimony of improved wellbeing), or ‘hard’ (qualification completion rates).
For most TEOs, both hard and soft data sources will be relevant indicators of performance. The guidelines to the Tertiary Evaluation Indicators refer to a wide range of data sources that can be drawn on for self-assessment (and EER) purposes.
EERs are generally not interested in data in isolation, but in how the data has been used by the TEO under review to understand and improve performance.
For this reason, the primary data guiding every EER should be whatever has been identified by the TEO, and confirmed by NZQA, as significant.