ABSTRACT
The QAA has published 47 benchmark statements (22 in April 2000 and a further 25 in March 2002). In addition there are Department of Health/NHS benchmarks, a benchmark for Masters programmes in business and management, a benchmark for Masters of Engineering programmes and there is also a benchmark for Initial Teacher Training in Scotland. Finally, there is generic benchmark for foundation degrees. The benchmarks were put together by working groups which drew their membership from academic and professional bodies. The statements are seen as evolutionary and will be reviewed from 2003 onwards. As has been noted several times, different disciplines already had benchmark statements of one kind or another. In particular, professional and statutory bodies (PSBs) have, with varying degrees of specificity and with differing levels of policing, issued general curriculum specifications for many years. Houghton (2002) has provided a detailed analysis of how the benchmark statement for engineering was used at his institution alongside the statements from the UK Engineering Council, the UK Engineering Professors’ Conference and the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology-and the difficulties this presented. It is interesting to compare on the one hand the experience of Houghton, a practitioner, with the demanding and sometimes contradictory advice on the status of the SBSs, with the reassuring declarations of Laugharne (2002) on behalf of the QAA on the other. To some extent the different perceptions can be explained by reference to the different approach implied by the guidance contained in the academic review methodology of 2000 (which was never implemented in higher education), where the function of benchmarks was for the first time fully articulated, with the more conciliatory and ‘lighter touch’ approach implied by the institutional audit methodology which replaced it in 2002. SBSs express expectations in relation to curriculum, skills and standards. In terms of curriculum they lay down a ‘broad framework’ (rather than any detailed
In terms of skills, expectations are provided on variously the cognitive, subject and transferable skills that graduates in any given discipline area might be expected to possess. In terms of standards, expectations are expressed as ‘threshold’ and/or ‘typical’ student’s achievement. Threshold means third class honours degrees and typical means upper second. In some cases reference is made in the standards section to ‘levels of excellence’ meaning first class degrees. As noted by Jackson (2002) QAA benchmarks only incorporate one of three potential elements of any benchmark. They do involve a reference point against which similar programmes can be compared but they do not include a criterion (ie a dimension or indicator) against which or along which something could be measured, nor gradations of distinction which would mark out the poor, the good, the excellent or the exceptional.
