Mission Documents

Thanks to Aygun Ozyahyalar and Emete Mavili for pointing out that we missed out City and Guilds in our 'About the School' section of the Mission documents. We've updated our CEA Self-Report page accordingly.

Summary of EAQUALS Recommendations to EPS

After the EAQUALS preliminary visit to SFL last year, Yonca Aybay kindly put together this summary of the EAQUALS recommendations to SFL; it also now has a permanent home in the Miscellaneous Links Section of this site. Our thanks to Yonca, and again to all involved in establishing the accreditation process at that time.

If we are missing any key documents from this initial phase, we will be very happy to receive them and publish and archive them for ongoing reference; or indeed any other documents, suggestions, and proposals that you think may be useful.

All the CEA Standards at a Glance

Thanks to Nevin Adalar and Hatice Gunes for putting together this easy-to-read, printable overview of all the CEA Standards; it is now permanently stored in the 'Miscellaneous Links' Page

CEA Student Achievements and Complaints Standards

In CEA, there are four standards for student achievements, and one standard for student complaints. The first standard in the student achievement category is of most concern, since it regards accurate and reliable placement of students into appropriate levels based on their prior and existing knowledge and skills. There seem to be a number of areas in SFL where this not the case, as the draft report on the student achievement standards explains.

There is quite a lot of work to be done in this area; for now, the draft has been archived in the Miscellaneous Links Section of this site to await further work, comment and suggestion.

Premises

During the EAQUALS accreditation process, Nevin Adalar and Erkan Arkin prepared the following draft document about EPS Premises. Thanks to both of them for preparing this overview; it's available as a permanent resource in our miscellaneous links section. Comments and suggestions about improving premises, resources and facilities in any part of our operation are very welcome. It's not just about how we look to accrediting organisations - it's how we look to our students...

Do all parts of SFL need to go through the accreditation process at the same time?

Both CEA and EAQUALS have confirmed that different units of a large institution such as SFL can apply for independent accreditation at different times.

The Accreditation Committee is currently discussing the expenses and budget for accreditation, with particular regard to buildings, classrooms and facilities.

One particular concern we have is that it is very difficult to see how MLD, in particular, could satisfy international accrediting standards when it has so little physical infrastructure; the current central office building leaves much to be desired, but most damaging is the absence of classrooms dedicated to language teaching. We will be therefore doing the following:

a) inviting small mixed groups of teachers, students, and admin for a 'creative walk-around' our facilities to view them particularly through students' eyes, and to help make recommendations for improvement.
b) inviting you through this BLOG or other channels to make recommendations for making our facilities more welcome, more inspiring, and more student-friendly.
c) looking at the rather more straightforward accreditation standards regarding health, hygiene, safety, disabled access as we do so,
d) examining physical and timetabling logistics to see how much more physical space we might need.
e) formulating a draft of the accreditation budget as we do so.

If at any time, you feel you would like to join us in this, or indeed any other aspect of accreditation-related work, you are most welcome to contact us.

CEA Student Service Standards

There are eight CEA Student Service Standards. The first draft of the steering committee report is now completed and can be viewed by following the link on this site. Much of this has been again been written in a 'student handbook' discourse, for future handbooks.

What happens next with these documents?

Well, they are passed to administration to distribute to relevant units, and put here for viewing, reflection and comments.

The Committee's feeling though is that we will not have a global picture for implementation until we have covered all 44 of the standards. So, we can call this the first round, after which all documents will need reviewing again.

CEA Policies and Procedures

Full PDF of CEA Policies and Procedures added to the links section of this site.

An apology for the delay in printing the CEA handbooks, whilst we trying to establish which version we should be using. This has now been confirmed, and even better the revised version works from 44 standards rather than 52!

New Links

The Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Arena is a document that has been very kindly forwarded by Professor Dr. Mehmet Altinay; it repays attentive reading, and illustrates how   very important accreditation has become to higher institutions in their efforts to secure a prosperous future for themselves.

The site has also been updated to include the previous EAQUALS report on SFL.

Status of Draft Documents on this Site

Just to clarify: we have adopted a policy here of putting all our documents as drafts in the 'public domain'. This means that any interested party can review, comment and make suggestions for improvement until such time as  we have to submit documents to the accrediting authority.

Our initial deadline in this regard is probably sometime in June, if we are to submit a pre-application package in July. Given that the application is accepted, we would then have 3 more months to produce a self-report, which means that there is then additional time for refining and redrafting.