Participation of Hcéres in the new project “ESG-PBP Alignment”

As part of the ongoing dialogue between the European and Latin American higher education systems, Hcéres is participating in a new project aimed at aligning the two regional higher education quality guidelines. This project is part of Hcéres' long-standing cooperation with Latin America.

With five Latin American partner agencies and numerous evaluations in Latin America - the latest being the institutional accreditation of the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica in December 2023 - Hcéres is one of the European agencies most involved in this region. In line with its activities in Latin America, Hcéres has joined the interregional cooperation project "Alignment of SIACES-ENQA quality guideline in higher education for strengthening bi-regional trust" or " ESG-PBP Alignment".

The aim of this project is to strengthen mutual trust in quality assurance in higher education between the European and Ibero-American regions by establishing a dialogue between their standards and guidelines, i.e. the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) for the European Higher Education Area and the Principios de Buenas Practicas (PBP) for the Ibero-American Knowledge Area, with a view to harmonising them.

This general objective is subdivided into two operational objectives:

• To determine the degree of concordance between the two frameworks by means of a comparative diagnosis.
• To prepare a joint SIACES-ENQA proposal for the harmonisation of the quality guidelines with a view to their future alignment.

Hcéres joins 8 other European and Latin American agencies in this project, the final reports of which will be presented by SIACES and ENQA respectively as part of the forthcoming revision of the GGP and ESG.

The importance of this step, which represents a further step forward in terms of willingness to cooperate and understanding, was recognised in the declaration of the II European Union-Latin America and Caribbean (EU-CELAC) Academic and Knowledge Summit in May 2023, which promotes open dialogue for the construction of a bi-regional higher education area.

Photo caption The 2nd EU-CELAC Academic and Knowledge Summit. France was represented by Emmanuelle Garnier, President of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès University, President of the Commission for European and International relations, France Universités and Carle Bonafous-Murat, Permanent Delegate of France Universités in Brussels.

What are the Principles of Good Practice? 

The Principles of Good Practice are a set of guidelines for the operation of evaluation agencies and external evaluation processes. They correspond to Parts III and II of the ESG. While the PBPs share many similarities with the ESGs (independence of agencies, peer review, etc.), they contain original proposals that go beyond the missions currently described in the ESGs, such as the integration of the internationalisation of agencies. 

Hcéres had already co-authored an  article comparing two regional standards, the ESG and the ASG-QA (references and guidelines for quality assurance in African higher education), following its participation in the HAQAA2 initiative (Harmonisation of African Higher Education, Quality Assurance Accreditation). The ESG-PBP Alignment project will be carried out with a view to mutual learning, resulting in concrete proposals for the integration of the good practices identified in both frameworks in their next revision. Hcéres, which took part in the various consultations on the revision of the ESG (QA-FIT), is thus strengthening its involvement in the development of quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area.