Higher education's rapid expansion is paired with growing social expectations of its benefits and concern on its teaching quality. In response to these, institutional/national surveys based on an array of theories are widely used in universities for quality assurance, enhancement, and benchmarking. This paper reviews three major types of…

Maintaining the quality and comparability of qualifications has become a major priority for vocational education and training (VET) systems world-wide, especially for those countries which have decentralised assessment and reporting systems. In the absence of external examinations, one policy solution to align the assessment standards of different…

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, paper-based delivery of the National Benchmark Tests (NBTs) was not possible during the 2020 testing cycle. The NBTs, being a large-scale national assessment project, did not have alternative options, other than to offer the tests online. Moving these high-stakes tests online meant that certain considerations had to…

The 2023 edition of the European University Association's Autonomy Scorecard, the most comprehensive yet, provides a full comparative analysis of the state of play of university autonomy in 35 higher education systems in Europe. The Scorecard country profiles delve into in-depth system analyses, offering insights into recent developments and…

The 2023 edition of the European University Association's Autonomy Scorecard, the most comprehensive yet, provides a full comparative analysis of the state of play of university autonomy in 35 higher education systems in Europe. For the first time, each profile better contextualises the higher education landscape via a dedicated section, along…

This article examines the meaning and features of 'internationalisation' in higher education in the social and historical contexts of Hong Kong. From a perspective of shifting geopolitics of higher education aligned with a historical perspective of evolving academic traditions, this article discerns parallel developments featuring the transition…

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results have become synonymous with quality benchmarking, determining standards and comparing performance among 15-year-old students in countries around the globe. Concern, however, exists with the utility and consequential validity of the newest measure to the suite of the OECD's PISA tests:…

Creativity has fascinated scholars for generations, and its identification as one of the key 'twenty-first century skills' necessary for economic growth has led to renewed interest. This creates two challenges for the OECD: its flagship Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) does not directly measure creativity. Secondly, the…

The study investigates in the Benchmark for Scientific Literacy of Chinese Citizens. The background of issuing the Benchmark, its procedure, and contents are analyzed; the key for analysis revolves around the huge debate triggered by the Benchmark on Chinese internet. The debate can be traced to historical discussions in China, regarding the…

This book investigates university internationalization in different national contexts and compares internationalization performance across national boundaries. Internationalization has been recognised by policymakers as the key to perform successfully within the new global context: the author identifies primary motivations for universities to…

This article explores approaches to assessment of competence against nationally recognized units of competency and considers these approaches with regard to the intent of the underpinning units of competency and the notion of compliance with the Standards for Registered Training Organizations (RTOs) 2015, in particular Clause 1.8. Specifically,…

An extensive literature has explored the influence of the OECD on school education policies globally, while their influence on higher education policies has been underexamined. This article addresses that void by analysing the internationalisation of higher education in Israel and South Korea. We suggest that joining the OECD provided political…

In the last 15 years the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) has become a very influential basis for the design of language curricula and the assessment of language learning outcomes, not only in its home continent but around the world. This article provides a basic introduction to the CEFR and then identifies the issues that have arisen…

In company with other leading jurisdictions around the world, Hong Kong is taking important steps to mainstream computational thinking education (CTE) into the primary grades curriculum. At the vanguard of this movement in Hong Kong, CoolThink@JC is a 3-year course sequence for upper primary students designed to develop computational thinking…

Quality aims at meeting customer satisfaction through its various attributes in a product, process or system. Quality has to meet the requirements of a competitive environment, offer good price for cost and meet customer satisfaction. In the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system, quality means the special attributes of ODL, such as being…