No quibble with QAA

Your story on Kingston University's recent Quality Assurance Agency report reminds me of those extracts from theatre reviews that end up on billboards - "a wonderful night out" but omitting "if it hadn't been for the terrible acting", ("Kingston bursting, says QAA", August 12). Only your report does the opposite, reporting quite legitimate concerns and then omitting the sentence that says what the university is doing to address them.

It is news to me, and the QAA, that we have "clashed". On the contrary, Kingston is very pleased with the report, which identified seven examples of good practice and made only three recommendations for action (two "advisable" and one "desirable"). By the standards of QAA audits this is a very good score. The only point on which Kingston differed from the QAA was not about space, as your report implies. The report suggests we should adopt a more top-down approach and require staff to use our e-learning system, "Blackboard", in a standard way across the university; we prefer a more bottom-up collegial approach that reflects the differences between disciplines.

The QAA does not say that Kingston is "bursting at the seams". It reports a range of student views, particularly in relation to studio space, and then reports the action being taken by the university (a £75 million investment in our academic estate). According to the most recent statistics, Kingston has 25 per cent more core teaching space per taught student than the average post-1992 university. I hope your readers will not rely on your "report" of the audit report but read the real thing on the QAA website.

Peter Scott
Vice-chancellor, Kingston University