The National Agency for Quality Assurance in Professional Education, created last August, will become functional in three months. The Government approved the regulations concerning the organization and functioning of the agency on April 1, IPN reports.

Under the regulations, the agency will have 26 employees. During the first two years of work, it will be financed with state budget funds (4.6m lei). Afterward, it will finance itself with money obtained from the contracts for the assessment of the institutions providing professional formation programs.

The agency’s administration board will have 15 members: 13 with scientific-teaching and scientific posts in higher and technical professional education; one representing the students and one representing the business community. The members of the board will be selected at an open contest for a term of four years and can be reelected for another term. The contest will be staged by a contest commission that will consist of five representatives delegated by at least three European quality assurance agencies included in the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education.

The mission of the National Agency for Quality Assurance in Professional Education is to externally assess the secondary vocational, technical professional and higher education institutions and to accredit them. It will also authorize the new education institutions and new initial and continuous formation training programs.