Tabling the motion, the vice chairman of the select committee on Education, Training and ICT, Hon. Alhagie Mbow, revealed that during the Fourth Ordinary Session of the National Assembly in the 2020 Legislative Year, the plenary committed the National Accreditation and Quality Assurance Authority (NAQAA) Bill 2020 to the committee with the mandate to review and scrutinise the bill and report back to the National Assembly.
He added that the committee first convened on the 14th day of January, 2021 to identify various stakeholders for consultations on the bill and during that time, reference was made to the existing Act 2013, the Interpretation Act and the 1997 Constitution with a view to facilitating a guided process and outcome.
According to him, the process was followed by series of engagements and consultations with witnesses from certain stakeholder institutions for exhaustive scrutiny, and the objective of the bill is to strengthen tertiary, higher and TVET educational systems.
Hon. Mbow further added that NAQAA as a body that oversees all the higher education institutions, as well as tertiary in the country, seeks to repeal the previous Act of 2013, to bring in a new one and the essence is to boost NAQAA’s powers to have quality in the higher education sector in this country.
“The financial viability is very important to set up, but NAQAA must not be in the picture where they would question how are you spending the money and where is the money going to, but rather, they should concentrate more in their oversight in terms of checking if there are any deviations from the standards they set which the committee recommends,” Mbow noted.
He again added that NAQAA should not be concerned on how private individuals create their own funds, how they utilise their funds to run their institutions, but they should concentrate on their core competencies to ensure there is quality education system in this country.
