Towards contextual quality: a stakeholder-informed instrument for the evaluation of Lesotho colleges’ programmes

This study presents a contextually responsive evaluation instrument for resource-constrained environments such as colleges in Lesotho. Colleges’ stakeholders’ accreditation experiences, including achievements such as strengthened internal quality cultures and public accountability and challenges like lack of differentiation within standards, complexity, ambiguity and limited contextual alignment. inform the design of the instrument. The study employs a qualitative design involving twenty-two participants from three purposively selected colleges with programmes that have undergone two accreditation cycles. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with college management and focus group discussions with academic, administrative and internal quality assurance staff. The instrument is designed to be more specific, reduce redundancy and complexity by merging repeated criteria and exclude institutional-level criteria, making it more relevant. The evaluation instrument is positioned to enhance contextual relevance in quality assurance practices, not only for Lesotho colleges but also for other resource-constrained countries seeking to balance credibility with practicality.