María José Lemaitre, Sociologist, with graduate studies in Education, is presently the Coordinator of the Quality Assurance Component in the Programme for the Improvement of Quality and Equity in Higher Education, which is carried out by the Ministry of Education in Chile with the support of the World Bank. In this capacity, she holds the position of Secretary General at the National Comission for Programme Accreditation in Chile, where she is in charge of organising the work of the agency. This includes heading the technical staff and working towards the establishment of an accreditation scheme for technical, professional and academic degree programmes offered by Chilean autonomous Higher Education institutions, both private and public.

From July 1990 to July 1999 she occupied an equivalent position in the Higher Council for Education in Chile - a public, autonomous organisation in charge of licensing private universities and professional institutes. There she was responsible for the design, implementation and development of institutional evaluation processes leading to a certification of institutional autonomy of new private Higher Education institutions in the country.

From 1990 to 1997 she was in charge of the design and implementation of the Programme for the Improvement of the Quality and Equity of Secondary Education (MECE-Media) at the Ministry of Education in Chile, which developed into a full fledged reform of Secondary Education currently under way.

The basis for her work were the research activities on secondary and higher education carried out from 1978 to 1990 at the Corporación de Promoción Universitaria (a national non-governmental organisation that carried out most of the research and policy analysis work on education, health and housing during the year of the military dictatorship in Chile).

She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) and is the representative of the Chilean Government at the Working Group for Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education within the educational sector of MERCOSUR.

She has published many articles on higher and secondary education, and has acted as a consultant for governmental agencies, international organisations and higher education institutions in several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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