The Signing of Memorandum of Arrangement Between Malaysian Qualifications Agency and Quality and Qualifications Ireland

Petaling Jaya, 4 May 2016 – The Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) and Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) today signed a Memorandum of Arrangement for cooperation in the field of quality assurance. The two agencies are responsible for quality assurance in higher and vocational education and training in their respective countries. Under the terms of the arrangements the agencies will cooperate in areas such as information exchange, staff development, exchange of experts, and joint research. 

The memorandum was signed by Datuk Prof Dr Rujhan Mustafa, Chief Executive of MQA and Dr Padraig Walsh, Chief Executive of QQI and along with Dr Hazman Shah Abdullah and Dr Bryan Maguire, the heads of quality assurance in the two agencies. The signing was witnessed by Malaysia’s Director General of Higher Education, Dato’ Prof Dr Asma Ismail and Ms Kerry O’Sullivan, Charge d’Affaires at the Irish Embassy in Malaysia.

“Today's signing is the latest stage in the longstanding and close relationship between the educational authorities in our two countries,” said Dr Maguire. “It reflects a high level of mutual confidence and a shared commitment to quality learning experiences for our students. I hope that today’s agreement will lead to even more exchange between our two countries”.

“We hope that MQA and QQI could undertake a comparability exercise on quality assurance and qualifications systems of both countries to help ease the recognition of qualifications offered in Malaysia and Ireland as well as increase the mobility of students between both countries,” said Datuk Rujhan in his remarks.

The signing took place during the 1^st European Union Support to Higher Education in the ASEAN Region (SHARE) Workshop which participated by representatives from quality assurance agencies, industry, professional bodies, employers, higher education institutions, student representatives and alumni from Malaysia, Cambodia, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, and Philippines.

The Workshop is one of the projects under SHARE four-year programme launched in 2015 and funded by European Union to strengthen regional cooperation, as well as to enhance quality, competiveness and internationalisation of ASEAN higher education institutions and to look at the readiness of ASEAN member countries toward the alignment of their national qualifications framework with the ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF), a device that functions to enable comparisons of qualifications across ASEAN member states. 

Focusing on qualifications framework, this workshop aims to provide opportunities to various stakeholders to exchange ideas, perspectives, aspirations and experiences in implementing the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) as well as challenges, issues and strategies around its implementation. MQF has been fully implemented since 2011 and is currently being reviewed. The alignment of Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) with the AQRF is significant as it could support in the recognition of qualifications, learners and workers mobility as well as in the development of better understood and higher quality qualifications systems that could facilitate the lifelong learning.