Programme & Institutional Accreditation Department
(CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT)
The curriculum development department is the heart and soul of the organization in terms of ensuring that standards and quality assurance are maintained in line with sound business practices. This department is essentially responsible for ensuring that the institution and programmes offered meet stakeholder needs and expectations as defined by the regulatory authority – the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA).
The department is indeed the watch dog of the institutional systems, processes, procedures and policies. However the department applies engagement and stakeholder involvement in its endevour to ensure compliance. Since there has been a paradigm shift from quality control to quality assurance underpinned by total quality management philosophy, the department ensures that there is both horizontal and vertical integration in terms of involving people at all levels across the various functional areas. In addition, outside stakeholders are also involved in programmes and process development.
Progrmme development is a critical building block to revenue growth and meeting stakeholder needs. It is therefore from this perspective that programme development has to be done in line with identified priority in terms of skills development. Therefore this process is informed by research that is carried out in-house by the research department as well as information gathered by the Human Resources Development Council (HRDC) through the various sectors committees that have been formed to spearhead needs analysis and skills development for the various sectors of the economy. In this regard our programme development is driven what industry and commerce requires in line with the country’s goals and objectives. The Ministry of Education and Skills Development plays a key role in ensuring that programmes so developed are also aligned with its boarder skills and competency development plan. Once developed programmes must then go through approval by BQA before they are offered, and hence they are scrutinized to ensure that they add value. After one year of running an approved programme the department spearheads a self study process – which is essentially a quality assurance programme to ensure that the programmes under review are meeting intended objectives as spelt out by the various programme outlines. Once a self study is conducted programmes are submitted to BQA for accreditation.
Essentially, the key purposes of the department are as follows:
- Maintaining a data base of key stakeholders and providing a platform for their input
- Identification of priority areas for programme development
- Coordination of programme and curricular development and review
- Coordination of approval and accreditation of programmes by BQA
- Coordination of the self study process
- Maintaining a data base of all programmes and correspondences from BQA
- Maintenance of programme status reports
