Benchmarking

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has an on-going programme of benchmarking academic disciplines. See http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/.

The programme covered honours degrees (BSc level) in the area of Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research ("MSOR") during 2001-2002. The Society participated in the working group that developed the benchmark statement. The statement was widely welcomed in the MSOR academic community as coping very well with the wide variety of degrees in the subject area. Before publishing this benchmark statement, the QAA ran a consultation.

In 2007, the benchmark became due for review. The QAA invited initial comments in the autumn of 2006. The Society's response was that the benchmark was continuing to work well and no more than minimal revision was needed. This view was widely shared by other organisations in the community.

A working group was set up to undertake the revision, which the Society participated in. A new statement with only very minor revision was developed. The QAA again ran a consultation before finalisation.The new statement was then finalised and published by the QAA.

The working group then developed an annex to the benchmark statement to cover integrated master's programmes, i.e. programmes of MMath type. This went to consultation in 2008 and was widely welcomed. The annex was published by the QAA early in 2009.

The links below go directly to the main benchmark statement and to the annex. Links are also provided to the Society's formal responses to the QAA consultations.

Main MSOR benchmark statement (June 2007) (PDF, about 90 KB)
Annex to benchmark statement for integrated master's programmes (March 2009) (PDF, about 100 KB)

Consultation response re original benchmark statement (PDF 13 KB)
Letter to QAA re 2007 review (Oct 2006) (PDF 23 KB)
Consultation response re 2007 review (Sept 2007) (PDF 35 KB)
Consultation response re integrated master's annex(Oct 2008)(PDF 33 KB)

A further step in the process occurred in 2009 when the QAA consulted on Master's Degree Characteristics. The working group was concerned that some aspects of master's degrees in MSOR were not well captured by the QAA draft. The group responded accordingly.