The Asia-Pacific Quality Network (APQN) has been developed with the purpose of serving the needs of quality assurance agencies in higher education in a region that contains over half the world's population.

Its mission is to enhance the quality of higher education in Asia and the Pacific region through strengthening the work of quality assurance agencies and extending the cooperation between them.

APQN has nominated Ms Zia Batool, Director General Quality Assurance HEC as Vice President of the APQN for upcoming election of Asia Pacific region.

Zia Batool has been serving HEC in the field of Assurance since 2003 and developed a globally compatible indigenous QA Model for higher education in Pakistan.

The QA and Ranking Model developed by her for Pakistan has also been lauded by the Vice Chancellors of universities of Commonwealth countries in a recent meeting of the conference of All Commonwealth Universities (ACU); specifically delegates from South Asia had shown great interest in adapting the QA and ranking model of HEC Pakistan.

HEC has also shared and led the similar model development for Islamic World and would now facilitate rest of the developing regions as they intend to follow HEC QA Model.

HEC Pakistan has succeeded in having its own QA Model label recognized widely.

The education experts term this global recognition as outcome of continuous reforms introduced by HEC during last decade aiming at improving quality of higher education and hoped that this journey of success would continue in future as well.

It is matter of pride for Pakistan that the progress made in higher education sector is being recognized as one of the rising stars in the world.

The global credibility of QA practices and policies of HEC is linked with improved standards of graduates of the country and wider recognition of qualifications offered at Pakistani universities.