National Accreditation Agency (NAA)

Address: 115162, Shabolovka 33, Moscow
424000, Lenin Sq. 3, Yoshkar-Ola, Mari El Republic

Description: The National Accreditation Agency â?? the NAA (until March 2005 the National Accreditation Agency was named the National Accreditation Center) undertakes external quality assurance processes at institutional and program level on a regular basis. It involves accreditation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Russian Federation, namely:
develops materials and recommendations for conducting self-evaluation and external review;
trains experts for the external evaluation teams and heads of HEIs;
determines objective accreditation criteria and standards on the basis of information annually collected from the HEIs;
represents evaluation time-tables, keeps the database of experts and develops methodological recommendations for external evaluation;
prepares the final reports on the quality of the HEI to be accredited on the basis of self evaluation, external review, accreditation criteria for the Accreditation Board (the independent organization which makes the accreditation decisions);
conducts research into the development of quality assurance of higher education in Russia.

Appendix 1: The abstract from the Statute of the NAA.

Description: The NAAâ??s mission:
The mission of the NAA is to improve quality assurance of educational institutions in Russia through developing, promoting and maintaining Russian educational system in compliance with the highest educational standards and quality.
It is the NAA's responsibility to disseminate knowledge and information on the procedures of accreditation of higher education institutions and to make them public.

The NAAâ??s Objectives:
The main objectives of the Agency are:
to promote the development of the quality assurance system and evaluation of higher education;
to provide analytical, informational, methodological, research and organizational support to the Accreditation Board, regional education bodies in carrying out accreditation of educational institutions and quality assurance;
to provide analytical, informational, methodological, research and organizational support to educational institutions in preparation for the accreditation procedures.

The NAAâ??s main directions of activity:
The National Accreditation Agency is an authority that performs its mandate in the following aspects:
Accreditation, monitoring, analysis and complex evaluation of the Russian higher professional education;
Methodological development of materials and documentation on accreditation for educational institutions realizing higher educational programs as well as methodological recommendations for external evaluation;
Publication and dissemination of methodological manuals;
Organization of training courses for experts, heads and specialists of HEIs;
Creation of information technologies for quality assurance procedures;
Efficient information service, program and information software support, research work and accreditation modification;
Analysis, systematization and generalization of the accreditation outcomes;
Preparation of the final report for accreditation decisions on the basis of:
self-evaluation report,
external review report (assessment of facilities, content of educational programs),
outcomes of students skills (discipline benchmarking),
experts' opinions,
studentsâ?? questionnaire,
higher education institutions' benchmarking (accreditation criteria determined by all statistics of educational institutions).
The Agencyâ??s statement, objectives and main directions of its activity is publicly available at the web-site www.nica.ru . There are also some documents: the Order «On the Establishing of the National Accreditation Center» dated 18.04.1995 № 570 (appendix 2), «Regulation on the State Accreditation of a HEI» №1323 dated 02.12.1999 (appendix 5), demonstrating that the statement is translated into clear policy and the management and action plans (appendix 7 and 8).

Appendix 2. The abstract from the Order №570 issued on 18.04.1995.

Appendix 3. Regulation №1323 «On the Accreditation of a Higher Education Institution» issued on 02.12.1999.

Appendix 4. The management plan.

Description: The staff consists of 120 employees, among them 54 full time staff and 66 part time staff members.

Key Staff
Full name: Prof. Vladimir Navodnov, Dr. Science
Position: Director
Standing in the firm: 10 years
Membership in professional societies: corresponding member of the Academy of Educational Information Studies; member of the International Association of Professors;
member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences; honored worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation
Detailed description of the scientific activity: Doctoral thesis â??Optimization of Accreditation of Educational Institutions on the basis of the Integrated System of Conceptual Modeling and Decisions Makingâ?; more than 150 scientific and methodic works;
Main showings of qualification: Since 1993 Prof. Navodnov has been carrying out active research on the problems of quality assessment of education. He is an executor of the number of international projects:
TASIS EDRUS9511 â??Assistance in Licensing, Attestation, Accreditation and Certification of Business and Programmers in Russian Federationâ? (1997 â??1999)
CEPES/UNESCO â??Transnational Educationâ? (1998 - 2000)
Russian-Netherlands project Bureau CROSS �Professional and Public accreditation of training programmers and institutions� (1998)

Full name: Prof. Galina Motova, Dr. Ed.
Position: Deputy Director
Standing in the firm: 10 years
Membership in professional societies: International Academy of Science for Pedagogical education; honored worker of Education of Mary El Republic.
Detailed description of the scientific activity: Thesis (PhD) â??Pedagogical Base of Designing of the System of Accreditation of General and Secondary Educational Institutionsâ?,
Doctoral thesis â??Conceptual Frameworks of Accreditation of the Educational Systemsâ?, more than 70 books and papers;
Main showings of qualification: Since 1994 has been carrying out active research in the field of quality assessment of education and evaluation of the educational institutionsâ?? activity. Twice Prof. Motova was given grants for scientific research from the Ministry of Education of Russia and twice she got grants for scientific training and research from the Council for International Research and Exchange of the USA (IREX), acted as an executor of the number of international projects:
TASIS EDRUS9511 â??Assistance in Licensing, Attestation, Accreditation and Certification of Business and Programmers in Russian Federationâ? (1997 â??1999)
Russian-Netherlands project Bureau CROSS �Professional and Public accreditation of training programmers and institutions� (1998)




Full name: Prof. Mikhail Petropavlovski, Dr.Science
Position: Deputy Director
Standing in the firm: 10 years
Membership in professional societies: Member of the International Association of Mathematical Programming
Detailed description of the scientific activity: Doctoral thesis â??Mathematical Models of Accreditation of Educational Institutionsâ?, more than 80 books and papers
Main showings of qualification: Since 1993 Dr. Petropavlovski has been carrying out active research on the problems of quality assessment of education.
From the Ministry of Education of Russia he received four grants for scientific research. He was also awarded grants from Soros fund (1995, 1996, 2000), from INTAS fund (2001-2002), from Russian Academy of Science (2001-2002) and acted as an executor in the international projects:
TASIS EDRUS9511 â??Assistance in Licensing, Attestation, Accreditation and Certification of Business and Programmers in Russian Federationâ? (1997 â??1999)

Full name: Evgeniy Shuvalov
Position: Financial Director
Standing in the firm: 10 years
Detailed description of the scientific activity: about 5 works and papers

Full name: Dr. Aleksandr Maslenikov
Position: Head of the department of studentsâ?? outcome assessment
Standing in the firm: 10 years
Membership in professional societies: Honored worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation
Detailed description of the scientific activity: more than 80 works and papers

Full name: Dmitry Petrov
Position: Head of the analytic department
Standing in the firm: 8 years
Detailed description of the scientific activity: 12 works and papers

Full name: Dr. Ludmila Tihonova
Position: Head of the education and methodology department
Standing in the firm: 6 years
Detailed description of the scientific activity: more than 20 works and papers

Full name: Mikhail Muntyan
Position: Head of the department of logistics and telecommunications
Standing in the firm: 9 years
Main showings of qualification: Completed the Nexans Training Program (in 2004)

Full name: Tatyana Domracheva
Position: Head of the department of final reports preparation
Standing in the firm: 9 years

Full name: Galina Gerasimova
Position: Head of the accumulation of information department
Standing in the firm: 7 years

Full name: Aleksey Polevshikov
Position: Head of the financial department
Standing in the firm: 10 years
Membership in professional societies: Member of Non-profit Partnership «The Institute of Professional Accountants of Russia» («IPAR»)

Full name: Dr. Ekaterina Sindeeva
Position: Methodologist
Standing in the firm: 2 yeas
Membership in professional societies: Member of Union of Children and Teenagers of the Mary El Republic
Detailed description of the scientific activity: Thesis (PhD) â??The attestation of Institutions of Furthering Children Education on the basis of Pedagogical Monitoringâ?; 27 works and papers

Full name: Dr. Valentina Kiseleva
Position: Methodologist
Standing in the firm: 5 years
Membership in professional societies: Honored worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation
Detailed description of the scientific activity: Thesis (PhD) â??Methods of Quality Assessment of Learnersâ?? Training in the Sphere of Mathematics for Recognition of Educational Institution Activityâ?, more than 40 works and papers

Description: The NAA keeps the database of experts (more than 500 specialists) which includes the information about their qualifications, working experience in the sphere of evaluation, place of residence and work and some other factors. According to the international requirements the NAA began to train and certify experts for external evaluation teams. For this purpose the NAA developed special manuals, software, and a web-site. The NAAâ?? representatives also take part in external evaluation.
NAA has its own expertsâ?? database which includes 500 experts. NAA nominates them for participation in external reviews, develops recommendations, questionnaires, forms. It provides education and expertsâ?? training. Recently the site for experts was created: www.expert.nica.ru.
It was developed as a specialized learning environment for the specialists participating in external panels. The site is provided with the system of login and can be accessed only by the certified experts who have passed the training courses held by NAA. The site contains expertsâ?? database with all the necessary contact information: (the place of work (educational institution), the position, telephone/fax and e-mail).
There is a large survey of methodological material on accreditation procedures and quality assurance system that experts can use for their research and work.
They also have an on-line library at their disposal where they can find methodological material and documentation for their work and practice.
In future NAA is planning to open an on-line forum where experts will get an opportunity to ask various acute questions, will share their work experience and research results and discuss modern tendencies in the sphere of quality assessment with their colleagues.
The site is still in progress and is being developed.

Description: The NAA is independent to the extent both that it has autonomous responsibility for its operations and that the judgments made in its reports cannot be influenced by third parties such as HEIs, ministries or other stakeholders. Independence from the third parties and objectivity of the final reports are paramount to the NAA's activity. Independence is guaranteed by:
1. the technology of information collecting: HEI provide annual information on their activity with the help of special software, identical for all HEI, which is freely available in the Internet. Every 5 years the information is assessed by experts. This assessment is included into the external review of a HEI;
2. the technology of the report publication: the report on an HEI activity is simultaneously presented to the HEI being accredited and to all the members of the Accreditation Board 10 days before making an accreditation decision. All relevant stakeholders in HE can control the quality and the authenticity of the reported information;
3. the technology of decision making: the final report prepared by the NAA is the basis for decision making by the Accreditation Board.
At the end of the site visit the experts write a report including their judgements, recommendations or other formal outcomes. A brief version of the expertsâ?? account with other important information about the HEIâ??s activity (HEIsâ?? annual reports and self-evaluation reports, studentsâ?? inquiry, assessment of studentsâ?? outcomes, the content analysis of educational programs) is presented by the NAA in the final report.
The report is distributed among the members of the Accreditation Board and the HEI being accredited 10 days before making an accreditation decision. The HEI has a right to send its questions and comments on the final report to the NAA. However, they can not change the final report and the final decision. The appeal may be accepted only in case of a technical inaccuracy. The HEI may withdraw its application for accreditation and apply again later after correction of drawbacks.
The accreditation decisions are published at the NAA's web site www.nica.ru and at the journal «Accreditation in Education» http://ao.nica.ru.
The NAA is one of the basic elements in the Russian accreditation system. Notwithstanding the facts that the NAA was established by the order of the Russian Government (see Appendix 2) and the NAAâ??s activity is financed by the HEIs under accreditation (see Appendix 5, paragraph 4) one can state about the agencyâ??s operational independence.
According to the instruction of the Government of the Russian Federation the NAA is an independent legal entity (see appendix 9).
Though the Agency was established by the Government the Director is appointed for a five year term and he is responsible for staff forming (see Appendix 1 and Appendix 9).
The territorial independence: the Agency and the Ministry of Education are situated in different places: the Ministry is in Moscow while the NAA is in Yoshkar-Ola (850 km far from Moscow).
It is important for the NAA independence that the agency subsists on HEI fees and this payment does not depend on the accreditation decision.

Appendix 5. The instruction of the Government of the Russian Federation № 1749-p «On ratifying the lists of the Federal State Institutions» issued on 31.12.2004

Appendix 3. Regulation №1323 «On Accreditation of a Higher Education Institution» issued on 02.12.1999

Description: The NAA has adequate and proportional resources, both human and financial, to enable it to organize and run its external quality assurance process in an effective and efficient manner, with appropriate provision for the development of its processes and procedures.
The NAA consists of 7 departments: the analytic department, the department for the final reports preparation and publication, the accumulation of information department, the education and methodological department, the department of logistics and telecommunications, the financial department, the department of studentsâ?? outcomes assessment.
The staff consists of 120 employees, among them 54 full-timers and 66 part-timer workers. The NAA has its own expertsâ?? database which includes about 500 experts.
The NAA possesses 76 personal computers, 7 servers, 4 high performance printers, 32 units of other office equipment, communication channels of high quality, including the Internet.
The NAA is funded by HEI to be accredited. Scientific research into the field of quality assurance is funded by grants and international projects.

Description: In Russia the procedure of HEI accreditation is defined in the Regulation on the State Accreditation of a HEI (see Appendix 5) and includes:
â?¢ Autonomy and independence in terms of procedures and methods concerning quality evaluation both from government and from institutions of higher education,
â?¢ Self-evaluation,
â?¢ External assessment by peer-review group and site visits,
â?¢ Accreditation decision made by the Accreditation Board, and
â?¢ Publication of the accreditation results.
The NAA is one of the basic elements in the accreditation system of the Russian Federation because it participates actively at every stage of the accreditation system.
Thus, the NAAâ??s activity involves the following procedures:
â?¢ The NAA develops the procedures and methods concerning quality evaluation, then they are reviewed by the members of Accreditation Board and finally they are upheld by the order of the Federal Service of Supervision in Education and Science. In order to determine objective and independent accreditation criteria the NAA uses the statistical data about all HEIs in Russia. Having been discussed by the members of Accreditation Board the criteria are formally approved by the Head of Federal Service of Supervision in Education and Science.
â?¢ The NAA develops and presents manuals and software, which allows HEIs to computerize the preparation of self-evaluation reports and their further processing. The NAA publishes the manuals on self-evaluation, organizes seminars and workshops for heads and specialists of HEIs where among others the self-evaluation matters are considered. By now more than 1 500 people have been taught at such courses.
â?¢ The NAA keeps the database of experts (including more than 500 specialists) includes the information about their qualification, working experience in the sphere of evaluation, place of residence and work and some other facts. According to the international requirements the NAA began to train and certificate experts for external evaluation teams. For this purpose the NAA developed special manuals, software, as well as web-site. The NAAâ?? representatives also take part in external evaluation.
â?¢ The NAA prepares final reports on the quality of the HEI to be accredited on the basis of self-evaluation, external review, accreditation criteria, studentsâ?? opinion, assessment of studentsâ?? progress and also makes conclusions and recommendations on accreditation. On the basis of the final reports the members of the Accreditation Board take the accreditation decisions. After that the head of the Federal Service of Supervision in Education and Science makes the formal act of approval.
� The NAA publishes the accreditation results in the Internet and in hard copy. The HEIs successfully passed accreditation procedure have the possibility to present their good practice in the magazine «Accreditation in Education» published by the NAA.
Processes and procedures used by the agency, are defined and published at: www.nica.ru and in special editions: the textbook "The complex evaluation of an HEI", manuals on self-evaluation, site visits and user manuals for software, which computerize collection and presentation of information for the database. During preparation for an accreditation procedure, heads and specialists of HEIs may take a training course.

Appendix 3. Regulation №1323 «On the Accreditation of a Higher Education Institution» issued on 02.12.1999.
Appendix 7. The main page of the NAA's web site, its English version and the list of accredited HEIs of the Russian Federation

Description: The NAA's web site (www.nica.ru) contains information describing:
â?¢ the procedure of the accreditation of HEI including criteria and also the description of the process, procedures and steps of assessment,
â?¢ the database of accredited HEI with general information and the list of accredited programs, dates of accreditation for every HEI,
â?¢ manuals for HEI to be accredited;
â?¢ information for experts participating in evaluation teams;
â?¢ special software for processing the information on an HEI activity and presenting it to the NAA.
The NAA publishes the annual analytic report The Accreditation of the Institutions of Secondary and Higher Professional Education with information on the NAAâ?? activity and on the development of the accreditation system in Russia.
To avoid a no-conflictâ??ofâ??interest mechanism in place the members of external evaluation teams are appointed in consultation with the HEI to be accredited and also the professional organizations.
In Russia the system of HEI accreditation relies on approved mechanisms, which assure a high quality of work and materials presented by all the parties involved in the quality assurance process: transparency of procedures, publication of accreditation results, checking of self-evaluation report during the external review.
In order to guarantee the internal quality assurance the NAA provides annual research seminars and workshops aimed to improve the accreditation procedures. Representatives of the NAA and the Ministry of Education, members of the Accreditation Board and the rectors of institutions are invited to participate in the seminars;
The forum "Guest Book" is placed at the NAA's web site for an effective feedback. Anyone may ask questions or make a comment on the NAA's activity.
In 2004 the NAA successfully passed an external evaluation by the team consisting of the representatives of HEI and the representatives of regional bodies and the heads of the Federal Service of Supervision in Education and Science.
To learn more about the NAAâ?? activity it was visited by:
Ton Vroeijenstijn, Senior Consultant VSNU (Vereniging van Samenwerkende Nederlandse Universiteiten), the Netherlands,
Harry Brinkman, ex-rector of Amsterdam University, the Netherlands,
Drs. Adrian C.L. Verkleij, Senior Advisor, Center for Higher Education Policy studies, the Netherlands,
Prof. Tokuda Masanori, National Institution for Academic Degrees, Japan,
Gene Crozier, Head of Standards and Systems IM (Institute of Management), UK,
Jean-Claude Cuzzi, Secretary General FNEGE (French Foundation for Management Education in Paris), France.
To give more information about Russian accreditation system and the NAA the international conference Promotion of Co-operation in Quality Assurance was held by the NAA on the 22 and 25 of September, 2004 in St. Petersburg. Representatives from the United Kingdom, Russia, Poland, the Netherlands, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Germany, France, Finland, and Estonia participated in this conference, among them:
Tiit Laasberg, Estonian Higher Education Accreditation Center, Head,
Tuomi Ossi, Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council FINHEEC, Secretary General,
Kimmo Hamalainen, European Network for Quality Assurance ENQA, Secretary General,
Bruno Curvale, Comité national d'évaluation, Project Manager,
Angelica Schade, Accreditation Council, Managing Director,
Dr. Stefanie Hofmann, Accreditation, Certification and Quality Assurance Institute ACQUIN, Project Director,
Reil Thomas, Accreditation, Certification and Quality Assurance Institute ACQUIN, Managing Director,
Sholpan Kalanova, State Inspection Department of the Ministry of Education, Deputy Director,
Ton Vroeijenstijn, Quality Assurance Expert,
Marek Frankowicz, Jagiellonian University, Bologna Promoter ECTS,
Peter Williams, The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Director.
The NAA is ready to undergo an external review to be carried out by APQN as well.
The NAA realises the importance of this requirement and began to issue the journal «Accreditation in Education» where HEIs, experts and other stakeholders can express their opinion to the NAAâ??s activity, as well as accreditation procedures and criteria.
«Accreditation in Education» is issued eight times a year. The first issue of the journal appeared in September 2005. A foreign reader can get acquainted with the English Digest of the journal «Accreditation in Education» on the NAAâ??s web-site: www.au.nica.ru .
The Forum "Guest Book" is placed at the NAA's web site for an effective feedback. Anyone may ask questions or make a comment about activity of the NAA, the Accreditation Board, expert teams etc.
The suggestions concerning the procedures improvement are regularly discussed at the workshops organized by the NAA together with the representatives of HEIs, experts and other stakeholders.

Proof of recognition as a Higher Education Institution: Applicable Only For Institutional Members

Proof of the organisation’s good standing with the local QA agency: Applicable Only For Institutional Members

Applicable Only For Associate Members

Description: Applicable Only For Intermediate Members

Applicable Only For Intermediate Members

Applicable Only For Intermediate Members

Criteria Requirements for Observer: Applicable Only For Observers