The work of the Polish Accreditation Committee is supported by its Bureau. The detailed scope of activities of the PKA Bureau and its organisation is defined in the organisational regulations granted by the Chairman of the Committee. The Bureau does not have separate organisational units and its works are managed by a Managing Director appointed, after a competition, by the President of the PKA. The scopes of duties of the employees are adjusted to the tasks of the Bureau and the organisation and functions of the Committee, therefore each change in the competences of the Committee results in the necessity to change the scopes of duties of the employees of the Bureau. The tasks of the Bureau include in particular:
keeping documentation of matters addressed to the Committee;
organizing and recording plenary sessions, Presidium of the Committee, Sections operating within education areas, Section for Teacher Training, Appeals Section, Section for Ethics, Section for Examining Complaints and Requests, working groups, as well as participating in these sessions and keeping documentation related to the implementation of their decisions and arrangements; – facilitating site visits, programme and complex evaluations conducted by the Committee;
handling matters relating to the Committee’s cooperation with international organisations and institutions involved in quality assurance and accreditation, including participation in the works of their statuory bodies, working groups and international projects;
cooperation with the office providing services to the minister in charge of higher education, offices providing services to other relevant ministers, including those supervising higher education institutions and organisations and institutions operating in the field of higher education;
facilitating appointment, training and evaluation of Committee experts and organising their work for the Committee;
maintaining databases necessary for the performance of the statutory tasks of the Committee, developing statistical and information materials on the activities of the Committee.
The Bureau’s employees are primarily responsible for organising the implementation of tasks remaining within the competence of a given Sections operating within education areas, Section for Teacher Training, Appeals Section, Section for Ethics, Section for Examining Complaints and Requests, and they maintain an electronic database on the basis of which it is possible to precisely determine the progress or outcome of a given case. In addition, time sheets for the implementation of evaluations and proposals are centrally maintained for the ongoing monitoring of the case teams and their timeliness by the Committee management and the Bureau, as well as an online evaluation database which provides a source of information on the results of the Committee’s evaluations to all stakeholders.
