Clause 5e. The PSC should "propose" not "fix" the membership fees.
                            (The fees should be set by the General Assembly as provided for in 4d)
                         Clause 7e. Add the provision that "the Agreement shall be reviewed every 3 years".  

2. Accreditation Criteria
   
1. There was a wide-ranging discussion of accreditation issues, including short presentations on how it was carried out in Germany, UK and France. These indicated that the systems were broadly comparable, with similar documentation being scrutinised by a panel of academics and industrialists, who also visited the institution. All were looking to increase the importance of output standards in the assessment, but acknowledged that this was a difficult issue. Prof Squarzoni remarked that Italy was at the stage of considering how to implement accreditation - an ISO 9000 approach was one possibility, although he personally favoured a system based on those just described.
   
2. It was noted that the Education Ministers Meeting in Salamanca had placed "accreditation" high on the agenda but that the use of the word in that context was not the same as the external accreditation ESOEPE was considering. It was important that accreditation is not imposed "top down" and that the ESOEPE meaning of the word be universally established. Accreditation is intended to assist entry to the profession and not to be a form of university quality assurance. It was also likely that the EU Commission would become involved through proposed rationalisation of the Mobility Directives.  
   
3. Following discussion, a definition of accreditation (based on that in SARTOR – Annex B) was proposed:  

"Accreditation is the primary quality assurance process used to ensure the suitability of an educational programme as the entry route to the engineering profession. Accreditation involves a periodic audit against published standards of the engineering education provided by a particular course or programme. It is essentially a peer review process, undertaken by appropriately trained and independent panels comprising both engineering teachers and engineers from industry. The process normally involves both scrutiny of data and a structured visit to the educational institution."  

[Secretariat Note: Since the meeting, Prof Augusti has provided the definitions of accreditation used by H3E and by ABET (Annex C). The wording the PSC has adopted appears to be a more detailed definition, which falls within these more general statements].

Action:

Make the agreed definition of accreditation a key feature of the website.

4. PSC noted that many countries have some form of higher education quality assurance and acknowledged that accreditation can be an additional burden on educational institutions. Where possible, these processes should be aligned in order to prevent unnecessary duplication.
   
5. Regarding the audit process itself, the assessment criteria, and the implementation of decisions, it was noted that there was a significant measure of similarity between Germany, France and the UK. It was agreed that the essential elements were:
   
1. Although the educational establishment requires prior knowledge of the visit there should be an element of surprise in the details. It was important to interview students as well as staff.
   
2. For the process to be credible, assessors needed to be trained, experienced and competent in accreditation and be drawn from both academia and industry. The team needs to have a variety of background and disciplines.
   
3. Decisions to be made against known criteria, with any need for corrective action clearly specified against a timetable.
   
4. The expected curriculum has to bridge the gap between what is expected of a professional engineer (on which there is broad pan-Europe agreement) and the end of the secondary school system (which varies between countries). The core engineering subjects are most important with finance, management etc being of secondary consideration. Project work, both individual and in groups, is important and the level of research activity tends to be an indicator of staff quality.
   
5. Neither criteria nor process should be so rigidly drawn that innovative courses are discouraged.

                Mr Ramsay to construct draft data templates and circulate to PSC.
                 PSC to approve templates at the next meeting.
                 Construction of website to proceed along agreed lines (Prof Shannon and Mr Ramsay to liaise with                    FEANI).