Looking after learners’ interests: QQI Statement of Strategy 2025-27
Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI)’s role in education is to promote confidence and trust in the quality and reputation of Ireland’s tertiary education system.
Our work on the National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) and on qualifications connects further and higher education and English language education, involving public and private/independent providers, so learners can access and experience these as part of a seamless integrated tertiary education system. In 2025-2027, QQI will address new challenges in areas such as assessment, work-integrated learning; online learning; apprenticeships new and traditional; climate change, and equality, diversity and inclusion.
QQI’s vision is to create a flexible, responsive, and high-quality tertiary education system where learners have confidence that their learning experience is of a high quality and that their learning and qualifications are valued nationally and internationally. We will continue to look after learners’ interests, focus on quality outcomes for learners and the recognition, at home and abroad, of the learning and qualifications achieved by all who participate in Ireland’s tertiary education system.
Our strategy is underpinned by values of collaboration, trust, integrity, learning and innovation. These values are critical to how we work and to our success. We collaborate with our stakeholders – with learner representatives, institutions and providers, government departments and the funding agencies, professional and regulatory bodies and international peer agencies. We consult and engage widely and meaningfully with our stakeholders and partners so that we anticipate needs, innovate and deliver excellent service. We place significant value on the responsibility we share with others to maintain the confidence in and continued enhancement of the quality of Ireland’s tertiary education and training. At the same time, we regulate independently, fairly, and robustly.
The strategy for 2025-2027 has elements of continuity, such as creating a more dynamic qualifications system, higher quality and more comprehensive information to learners. The renewed commitment to strengthen and future-proof the NFQ and access, transfer and progression, which will better serve learners across all of education – learners in our schools, further, higher and English language sectors. The strategy has new elements too, namely that QQI will award the TrustEd Ireland quality mark to higher education and English language education providers who meet the relevant standards. This will ensure that international learners enrolled on higher education and English language education programmes in Ireland, receive high-quality education and qualifications that are respected and recognised worldwide.
Launching QQI’s fifth statement of strategy on 21 November 2024 at QQI’s biennial conference ‘Leading and learning in a changing landscape’, Keith Moynes (Assistant Secretary, Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science) described it as “succinct, comprehensive and detailed”, setting out “a clear vision and mission for the future” with “actions that are both ambitious and achievable”.
Future-proof the National Framework of Qualifications
We will further develop our platforms to promote the NFQ as the authoritative source of information on quality-assured qualifications, including micro-credentials. We will review and modify the NFQ award types and improve choice through the recognition of listed awarding bodies and the inclusion of academic and professional awards in the framework. We will also develop an authoritative list of English language education and higher education programmes offered to international learners by providers who have achieved the TrustEd Ireland quality mark.
Deliver trusted regulation, guidelines, advice, and services
We will continue to provide authoritative information about the quality of the public tertiary education system through a comprehensive monitoring framework. We will engage with further and higher education providers to develop appropriate models for future institutional quality review, while updating assessment guidelines to reflect changing teaching and learning contexts. We will seek to increase autonomy and flexibility for mature private higher education providers while ensuring oversight of quality and will devolve more responsibility for programme validation to education and training boards so that they are better able to develop flexible and innovative programmes. We will develop quality assurance guidelines for a single system of apprenticeship, for work-integrated learning and for programmes that span the tertiary education sector. Finally, through the services of NARIC Ireland, we will enable greater understanding of overseas qualifications by providers, employers, and international learners, including displaced persons and refugees.
Share valuable system-wide insights, research and analysis
We will improve our data analytics capacity to create QQI dashboards offering systems-level indicators on quality and qualifications and share guidance and thought-leadership with providers in assessment and artificial intelligence. We will inform providers, policy makers, and state agencies about insights and trends. We will also work to maximise the impact of our research and analysis through effective communications.
Deepen national and international partnerships
Through our relationships with state agencies, providers and other stakeholders, we will inform and influence education and training policy, and through our work with a diversity of learner representative and advocacy bodies, we will help develop mechanisms to effectively engage learners in the quality of their education and training. We will support capacity-building in the education and training boards by partnering strategically with funding authorities, provider representative bodies and other stakeholders. We will collaborate with provider and learner representative bodies to fully integrate the English language education sector within QQI’s regulatory and quality assurance frameworks.
Create a resilient and agile organisation
We will create a diverse and inclusive workplace, with a culture that values equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and operates effectively in a technology-enabled hybrid working environment consistent with our climate and sustainability obligations. We will nurture a culture of cross-organisational knowledge-sharing, communication and project management to enhance organisational agility and resilience. We will improve our services through user-centred design of information and communications technologies, business processes and platforms. We will also explore the potential offered by artificial intelligence, in line with the guidance for its use in the Irish public service.
Our new strategy is ambitious, yet achievable. It will enable QQI, through close collaboration and coordinated action with partners and stakeholders, to enhance the Irish tertiary education and training system in ways that empower it to anticipate the needs, innovate the solutions, and deliver the transformations we need to make the future a better one for us all.
W: www.qqi.ie
