DILI, 05 june 2021 (TATOLI) – The National Agency for Academic Assessment and Accreditation (ANAAA) Timor-Leste will conduct evaluative practices at Timor-Leste’s Universities on the accreditation of university programs in seven universities and institutional evaluation.
ANAAA’s Executive Director in Timor-Leste, Edmundo Viegas informed that the evaluation of the accreditation of university programs would take place in the third week of this month.
“We have contacted all universities whose programs will be subjected to the next evaluation of the accreditation of the University programs. So, between 19 to 23 July, the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Culture will decide a date to launch the evaluation of the accreditation of university programs,” Viegas told reporters at Ian Martin hall of INCT, in Dili, today.
He said according to the ANAAA’s plan, the evaluation of the accreditation of university programs, known as programmatic evaluation would take place from july to september: “And from september to november, we will carry out the evaluation on institutional accreditation.”
ANAAA had identified 22 university programs (departments) that are subjected to the evaluation of the accreditation of the university programs — Nurse, public health, law, social communication, agroforestry, and fisheries department at UNITAL, social communication, international relation, sport, and two other departments at UNTL, computerized accounting department at IOB, nurse, and midwifery at Cristal Institute, and other departments from other tertiary institutions.
He said five of the programs (departments) would be evaluated during the launching of the program, saying the rest would be evaluated in the following weeks.
Viegas said once the evaluation of the university programs was concluded, ANAAA would directly conduct the evaluation of the institutional accreditation, saying eight national tertiary institutions had had their institutional accreditation certificate expired – Universidade da Paz (UNPAZ), National University of Timor-Lorosa’e (UNTL), Dili Institute of Technology (DIT), Institute of Business (IOB), Canossa Institute, Catholic Teacher Training Institute (ICFP), Religious Catholic Institute (ICR) and Cristal Institute.
“These eight tertiary institutions would be subjected for their third time to the evaluation of institutional accreditation. Their first institutional accreditation evaluation took place in 2008-09, and the second one took place in 2015,” said Viegas.
He said ANAAA had evaluated up to 105 university programs of 11 tertiary institutions and of the number; only 18 percent achieved the ‘B’ mark, while the rest got ‘C’ mark: “Unfortunately, none of our university programs have gotten the excellent or mark ‘A’.”
“We still have a long way to go and more work needs to be done to achieve the excellence or ‘A’ mark. So, one of the ANAAA’s works is giving recommendations as well as courage to each institution to invest and improve the quality of the courses and institutions in accordance with the standards set by ANAAA,” Viegas added.
Journalist: Filomeno Martins
Editor: Rafy Belo
