Sharing the achievements of our project to improve the quality of higher education in Sierra Leone
As the Assuring Quality Higher Education in Sierra Leone project comes to an end, we celebrate what we have achieved and share resources for building on the legacy of this exciting project.
Four years ago, a group of academics in Sierra Leone began an ambitious project to bring together all the higher education institutions across our country. We saw an opportunity to work together to improve the quality of higher education in Sierra Leone and to ensure that students graduate from university better equipped to address the needs of the modern workplace and wider society.
The Assuring Quality Higher Education in Sierra Leone project took a many-stranded approach to achieving this goal. We worked across four broad subject clusters, looking afresh both at the underlying ways that teaching and learning happen in universities and at the way the quality of higher education is standardised and assessed.
So, what did we achieve? As this leaflet summarises, here are just some of the numbers to highlight:
In the area of university teaching and learning, over the past four years, 295 modules across eight degree programmes have been updated with standardised content to respond better to employer needs. Across the country, 475 lecturers and members of university staff have had training in learner-centred teaching, critical thinking, and Gender, Diversity and Inclusion. And we have developed a range of resources — for curriculum review, pedagogical training, and critical thinking — to support this work in the future.
We have ensured these developments have been aligned with the world beyond university by engaging 90 organisations in stakeholder engagement activities. You can read some of the examples of the difference that stakeholder engagement can make in this blog post about Njala University’s engagement with agricultural business leaders.
Alongside all this, the work to improve quality assurance (QA) in higher education has resulted in a new national diploma in quality assurance; 34 QA officers have qualified with this diploma so far. And we have developed a national framework for quality assurance. The Tertiary Education Commission is looking after these activities to ensure sustainability of the QA system.
But the project is about more than just numbers. The newly published final report from the evaluation of AQHEd-SL described the project as a “remarkable success” and found that it has:
“… delivered on all of its intended outputs; it has partly exceeded the original plans, and it has flexibly adapted to changing circumstances whenever needed.”
The evaluation attributes the project’s successes particularly to the nature of AQHEd-SL as fully Sierra Leonean owned. And it came at the time when there was commitment from universities and policymakers for change to happen.
As Rev. Fr. Prof. Joseph Alimamy Turay, Vice Chancellor of the University of Makeni, noted:
“It is too soon to see the lasting impact of this project, however, what is clear is that the outcomes are outstanding. Quality culture has been established and is being actively sought in Sierra Leone higher education, and we at the University and more widely on behalf of the Conference of Vice Chancellors and Principals, will work actively to continue the sustainability of these outcomes and indeed to build upon them for a brighter future for our young people and the development of our country.”
As the Assuring Quality Higher Education in Sierra Leone project comes to an end, we want to ensure that the wealth of resources developed over these past four years continue to be accessible and usable. Two big components of this are the AQHEd-SL repository and our YouTube channel.
These two platforms house a wealth of materials from the AQHEd-SL project. To help you navigate these resources we have put together some summaries of where to find the key resources to support ongoing work building on this project:
- AQHEd-SL resources related to curriculum review
- AQHEd-SL resources for quality assurance in higher education
- AQHEd-SL resources for critical thinking skills development
- AQHEd-SL resources for pedagogical training
Thank you to everyone who has been involved in this project — to all the partners, in Sierra Leone, UK and US; to all the students and teaching staff who have embraced the new approaches and ideas in the AQHEd-SL project; and to the senior leadership in higher education and policy in Sierra Leone who have engaged with us on this journey.
And we want to thank the SPHEIR programme, led by British Council, along with Universities UK International and PwC, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for providing the funding.
