Abstract:

The Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science "National Accreditation Agency in Education" (http://obrnadzor.gov.ru/ ) regularly rotates the accredited experts included in the register. New experts are selected based on the results of the qualifying exam, which is taken in two stages. The first stage is testing on issues of state regulation of educational activities. The second stage is a personal interview with representatives of the National Accreditation Agency. During the interview, the expert's ability to navigate in specific problem situations, including in a situation of a possible corruption component of the activity, is ascertained. The register currently includes 1,799 accredited experts.

The research problem lies in the analysis of the new practice of conducting accreditation expertise, which excludes the expert's personal contact with representatives of the accredited educational organization.

Research methods:
Content analysis of regulatory documents, analysis of the practice of expertise, a survey of experts, comparative analysis, interpretation of the results.

Results and discussion:
The practice of conducting expertise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic has been changed. A regulation was developed for a new type of expertise, which was named "Accreditation without leaving an educational organization". The analysis of the quality of training in educational programs is carried out on-line on the basis of a package of documents provided by the accredited organization. At the same time, the expert has no personal contact with the educational organization. If an additional request for documents or information is necessary, the expert applies to the head of the expert group, who transmits the corresponding request. This makes it possible to comply with the Code of Ethics and Official Conduct of Employees of the National Accreditation Agency, whose activities ensure the organization and conduct of accreditation at all levels of the education system in Russia.

The purpose of the code is to establish ethical standards and for the dignified implementation by civil servants of the rules of official conduct and the fight against corruption. On the basis of content analysis by categories of analysis "observe", "abstain" and "strive" three thematic lines presented in the Code are highlighted:
1) what ethical standards must comply with the State servant;
2) from what behavior the State servants should refrain;
3) how the State servant should work on himself to meet ethical requirements.

A survey of 43 experts who took part in the examination of the new type showed that 65% consider the new regulation to be correct and effective. 35% of experts believe that they are deprived of the opportunity to quickly clarify the data, and this negatively affects the results of the examination.

Conclusion:
Changing the practice of conducting accreditation expertise is an effective means of preventing corruption in education. The inclusion of questions on the content of the Code of Ethics for the Service Conduct of Employees of the National Accreditation Agency in the examination testing guarantees knowledge of ethical standards. Conducting an expertise without leaving an educational institution ensures compliance with the code of ethics.

Keywords:

Accreditation, ethical issues, expertise without leaving, analysis of documents, ethical code of an expert.