1.1 Meaning of Quality Assurance
Quality refers to the standard of a phenomenon when it is compared to other things like it: how good or bad something is, that is, to be of good/poor/top quality or of a high standard. Quality in education therefore means the relevance and appropriateness of the education programme to the needs of the learners and community for which it is provided (Agu, 2014). Quality assurance on the other hand, is about consistently meeting product specification or getting things right the first time, every time. Quality assurance (QA) according to Nndowiseni (2012) is a process-centered approach to ensuring that a company or organization is providing the best possible products or services. It is related to quality control, which focuses on the end result. Quality assurance focuses on enhancing and improving the input, process and output that is used to create the end result, rather than focusing on the
result itself. Among the parts of the inputs that are considered are: the human and material resources; while process that are considered in QA are: planning, design, content, development, maintaining standards, production and service whose output when combined together yields positive outcomes (Nndowiseni, 2012). Other aspects of outputs that are considered includes: academic achievement on tests, scores and progression and pass rates, thus, the internal and external efficiency.