ABSTRACT
The question of giving advice to the new national body was crucial for the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Its 'peer review' relationship with the institutions had been carefully constructed as a means of making judgments specific to the institution concerned, without any 'ranking' of one institution or course against another. The CNAA was not choosing where courses should be run or selecting which institutions should develop or contract. It was making judgments about the standards of courses and of the means of their delivery to students. The Coventry courses were described as being 'of high quality as judged by a wide range of criteria'; in the case of Polytechnic of Central London the Council stressed 'the unique urban/metropolitan policy emphasis of the course'; the Council was 'unable to make a case that the courses at Chelmer and Gloucester were of "particular quality"'.
