Education recommended that the then two streams of quality assurance in higher education - Subject Review and Academic Audit (which had been in use since 1991) - should be brought together under a single body. QAA was established In April 1997 through the transfer of functions and staff from the former Higher Education Quality Council and the quality assessment divisions of HEFCE and HEFCW. The Dearing Report and its legacy The Dearing Report published in 1997 "gave the QAA the remit of providing assurance about standards and quality", following which it developed a higher education qualifications framework, a code of practice and subject benchmark statements, and established a pool of external examiners. This laid the foundations for the so-called Academic Infrastructure, which QAA developed between 1997 and 2001 (a set of UK benchmarks for quality and standards) and the development of a new, UK-wide process of Academic Review which comprised elements of both Subject Review and Academic Audit - with an emphasis on the latter. The new process was introduced in Scotland, but before it had become fully operational across the UK a number of English universities complained about the administrative burden that this approach entailed, leading to a rethink by the Westminster government. The Scottish and Welsh higher education authorities took this opportunity to set up their own national arrangements, while in England QAA worked with the bodies representing higher education institutions (Universities UK and Guild HE) to devise a modified approach known as Institutional Audit. QAA Scotland developed the procedure known as Enhancement-Led Institutional Review (ELIR), while in Wales the method known as Institutional Review was established. Northern Ireland followed England and adopted Institutional Audit. QAA remained the organisation charged with developing and undertaking these activities. It was agreed that in England there would be a transitional period of three years (2002 to 2005) during which all higher education institutions would undergo their first Institutional Audit. Thereafter audits would take place on a six-yearly cycle. In the year prior to their audit, institutions underwent 'developmental engagements' - unpublished subject-based reviews to support internal quality assurance. There were also 'discipline audit trails' (DATs) - selective subject-based enquiries that enabled a phased reduction of the subject focus of QAA reviews. In 2005 a revised Institutional Audit model was developed and adopted with the agreement of the representative bodies and HEFCE. This removed the DATs, thereby freeing time in the audit