Will the RDS be included in QAA institutional audit?

Please note: the Researcher Development Statement is an evolution of the JSS, highlighting the range of knowledge, skills, behaviours and personal qualities which the Councils expect researchers to develop over the course of their training. A much more detailed Framework is being developed, which is intended as a tool for researchers and HEIs to assist in planning, promoting and supporting the personal, professional and career development of researchers in higher education.

Institutional audit is an evidence-based process carried out through peer review. It balances the need for publicly credible, independent and rigorous scrutiny of institutions with the recognition that the institutions themselves are best placed to provide stakeholders with valid, reliable and up-to-date information about the academic standards of their awards and the quality of their educational provision.

Institutional audit encourages institutions to be self evaluative so institutions may decide to use the Researcher development statement (RDS) as an additional reference point to help with the development of their research degree programmes. Other reference points include the Academic Infrastructure.

Before an institutional audit the audit team will have been provided with information received from the institution as a briefing paper and there is usually a student written submission. These documents provide auditors with information that may then be followed up at audit and it is possible, depending on how institutions decide to engage with the RDS, that these briefing papers may in future mention the RDS.

The report published by QAA that follows the institutional audit includes a comment made about institutional arrangements for postgraduate research students, but there is no specific requirement to report on the current ‘Joint skills statement’ or the RDS.  More information about institutional audit for England and Northern Ireland can be found at www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/institutionalAudit/default.asp.