Quality Assurance an Accreditation in Higher Music Education

In the afternoon so called Discipline Sessions took place followed by Open Houses at the art schools in Gothenburg:

1. School of Design and Crafts/HDK
2. Valand School of Fine Arts
3. Chalmers University of Technology
4. Academy of Music and Drama/Artisten

I chose to attend the session organised by the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC). The topic for the session was "Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Music Education". First we were given a short presentation of the Association itself and its projects. "AEC is a European cultural and educational network with more than 248 member institutions for professional music training in 55 countries" (from the AEC web site) . It was founded already 1953. Among other things AEC has been focussing on the Bologna process and its implications for its members. Two keywords in the Bologna process is "learning outcomes" and "quality assurance". AEC has established that the accreditation should be made by the music institutions themselves with a so called subject specific approach. Therefore they introduced a new service with reviews by a team of "critical friends". The review results in a report with recommendations for improvements. As a help AEC has put together so called Polifonia/Dublin Descriptors. It was pointed out that it is important that the team is internationally composed to get a varied perspective. It is also important that the context is considerated. Even a very conservative school can be regarded successful if the students meet high standards. So far there has not been any evalutation of artistic research, which will be a special challenge. Since practice based research still is a very young area there is a problem with "peer reviewing".

There are several document which can be downloaded from the AEC website, for example

1. Bologna and Music
2. Accreditation in European Professional Music Training


Pia Shekhter