Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Council for National Academic Awards has been, since its creation in 1964, the most public and explicit organization in the history of British higher education. It has been so for several reasons. Its charter and statutes virtaully required it to be, by establishing as its aim the guardianship of the standard of degrees and other awards in the institutions whose courses it was to validate. Being accountable to do so, it established procedures by which not only to achieve this aim, but also to be able to defend publicly the basis of its accountability. It has therefore been able to speak with confidence for standards in the sector and in its associated institutions. It has also had to deal with a considerable and complex range of polytechnics and colleges, discipline areas interdisciplinary programmes, curriculum structures, modes of teaching and assessment, research, and a diversity of traditions and developments.