Home > Higher Education > Non-university Institutions > The Nature & Purpose...

The Nature & Purpose of Accreditation & Authorisation

Accreditation and authorisation provide certification that the standards of a course are appropriate to the award to which it leads and that the course and the methods adopted in delivering it are likely to achieve the stated outcomes.

The purpose of Western Australia’s accreditation and authorisation process is:

• to protect the standing and quality of higher education awards in Western Australia;
• to assure the general public, the educational community, government and other agencies, employers and students that the courses accredited are appropriate to the award conferred;
• to ensure comparability of awards in higher education, and facilitate national and international recognition of awards; and
• to assist institutions to implement appropriate articulation and credit transfers between courses within nationally endorsed guidelines.

The accreditation and authorisation criteria and procedures are designed to ensure that higher education courses accredited by the Minister for Education are comparable in requirements and learning outcomes to courses at the same level in a similar field at Australian universities and that the institution has the capacity to deliver the courses.  To this end, they:

• require the review of the course by an independent Higher Education Advisory Committee, with appropriate expertise relevant to the field of study in which the course is being offered;
• include criteria requiring benchmarking of courses and outcomes against the broader higher education sector, and universities in particular;
• may include a site visit by the Higher Education Advisory Committee to assess the institution’s capacity to deliver the course; and
• include a process by which the institution is to be monitored annually and re-evaluated after a specific period before consideration is given to whether or not the course will be reaccredited and the institution reauthorised to deliver it.