The appeal procedure plays a very important role in the activities of the Polish Accreditation Committee, due to its statutory tasks and the consequences of the decisions taken. A higher education institution dissatisfied with a resolution adopted by the Presidium may file a motion for reconsideration of the case.
The appeal procedure includes:
- A motion for reconsideration filed by a party dissatisfied with a decision of the Presidium of the PKA taken in cases concerning:
- opinions on the registration of a non-public higher education institution;
- opinions on the fulfilment of conditions for the provision of degree programmes in a given field, level, profile and relationship of degree programmes with the strategy of a higher education institution;
- decisions concerning programme evaluation;
- decisions concerning comprehensive assessment;
The opinion on the application referred to above shall be prepared by the appeal section within 4 weeks of the date of receipt of the request by the Committee.
The appeal section shall prepare an opinion on the basis of a review prepared by a member of the Committee or an expert appointed by the Secretary General. The Chair of the appeal team shall present the candidate proposed as a reviewer to the Secretary General within 3 days of the date of receipt of the request by the Committee.
Outline of the appeal procedure
A higher education institution shall submit a request for a reconsideration of a case.
The Secretary General of the PKA shall appoint a reviewer or reviewers of the request, who, within two weeks from the date of receipt of the request, shall prepare a review.
The Committee experts who participated in the evaluation procedure may not participate in the review of the request.
In the event of rejection of the submitted reviewer(s), the Secretary General of the PKA shall agree with the Chair of the Appeal Section on another candidate(s).
The Appeal Section shall prepare a draft decision with the necessary justification based on the collected evidence and review.
The decision should be adopted by the Presidium of the PKA within 45 days from the date of registration of the request. The Chair of the Appeal Section shall present the case and participate with the right to vote in the PKA Presidium meetings, during which the decisions on requests for reconsideration are adopted. The PKA Presidium adopts a decision in an open vote by a simple majority of votes in the presence of at least half of the number of members.
The subject of the appeal may be both a decision on the programme and comprehensive evaluation, as well as a decision on the application submitted to the Committee. Objections may relate to procedural, legal, and substantive aspects of the evaluation and should relate only to these problems and to the extent to which they were the subject of evaluation and the basis for the adopted resolutions.
The Presidium shall decide to change the opinion or evaluation only in cases where the presented arguments concerning each charge made remove any doubts which were the reason for the original decision and, at the same time, are within the acceptable limits for providing additional information and documentation.
Decisions taken by the Committee shall be final and may be amended only by the Committee. The issue of appealability of the Committee’s resolutions was unequivocally resolved by the Supreme Administrative Court, which decided that the PKA’s resolution does not constitute an act of public administration and as such is not subject to administrative jurisdiction and cannot be reviewed by the Administrative Court. The existing appeal system serves the quality of education well and strengthens the independence of the PKA decision.