Promoting quality culture in VET Erasmus Project

Project Title

Promoting quality culture in VET

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Assurance; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

The issue of quality and quality management in VET constitutes one of the major fields for development for the 40 years and in European Union a lot of resources have been devoted to increase the quality of VET. More than 50 different models have been developed within LLP-program, focusing on different aspect of Quality management in VET. The available QA guides and kits are based on a fairly traditional model which focuses on “evaluation” rather than engaging the teaching staff on incorporation of evaluative ideas into practice.

Folkuniversitetet Uppsala and partners has since 2009 been carrying out several projects within LLLP and Erasmus+ in order to translate EQAVET indicators to a realistic and simple model and instruments for quality improvement in VET. During the 3 first project the partnership realised different and many times contradictory expectation of quality in VET. Decision makers used quality measures as evaluation of VET policy while VET managers at providers level used quality as justification for public budget they received. At the same time teaching staff expressed a dissatisfaction with all quality masseurs since it was equal to extra bureaucratic administrative work which had little or no impact on teaching process in the classroom. When we did the piloting activities on self-assessment during “From NQAVET to EQAVET”, we could see that the assessment of quality at institutional level differed between management view on the level of quality and the opinion of teachers. This gave us the enough justification to initiate a project that develop guidelines which help the VET managers to engage teaching staff before during and after quality initiative
The overall objective of the project “Promoting quality culture in VET “was to support VET leadership to motivate and engage VET-teaching staff in implementation of quality initiatives at VET-institution by improving prior elaborated guidelines. The project “Promoting quality culture in VET” aimed to further develop prior elaborated guidelines for VET-leadership which enabled them engaging and motivating teaching staff regarding quality initiatives 4 different cycle phases (planning, implementation, evaluation and review). The guidelines were developed on the bases of EQAVET quality cycle in an interactive form and in printed and electronic form in languages.

The project “Promoting quality culture in VET “consisted of 6 partners with such profiles as:
a)Folkuniversitetet offers a wide range of adult education, both initial and continuous Vocational education and training, secondary education and labour market training. Folkuniversitetet has been the initiator and coordinators of the three (3) prior quality project where these partners were included.
b)Rinova Ltd is a social enterprise that specialises in the design, development, implementation and evaluation of cultural, social and economic development programmes in the areas of: Lifelong Learning and Skills, Employment and Employability, Enterprise, community development and social action, The Creative Industries and Cultural Learning. They are expert in quality and monitoring of VET projects and they were also partnering in former projects mentioned above.
c)MMC provides: VET courses such as office administration, accounting officers, IT technician, sales and retailing, certified project management, ECDL courses, tourism programmes etc. They were chosen because they had deep experience in Peer Review model adapted to EQAVET. Being a VET institution, they provided much input regarding piloting and review of feedback after piloting activities
d)Revalento is a consultancy which has vast experience of development of guidelines and training materials in the field of quality in VET. They developed all the guidelines during 3 joint projects regarding EQAVET.
e)DIMITRA Education & Consulting is one of the largest Vocational Education & Training (VET) Organizations with Training Centers in five (5) cities in Greece. DIMITRA holds a twenty-five-years’ experience in offering educational services in VET by utilizing its international experience and the state-of-the-art training methodologies and technological innovations. They have a strong IT department with strong experiences in developing online structure for guidelines and self-assessment Quick Scan which was a deliverable in the QC project
f)DOCUMENTA is a non-profit organization working in the field of “applied social research”, they were selected as partner for their knowledge in research and analysis of VET system.

The impact of the project was a) empowerment of teaching staff with regards to quality initiatives in VET-organisation b) enabling VET-organisation in overcoming the present barriers in utilization of evaluation result of QA-initiatives in review and improvement c) facilitating the work of EQAVET in monitoring the impacts of their Quality models and indicators in VET-organisation at EU-level.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 331607,66 Eur

Project Coordinator

STIFTELSEN KURSVERKSAMHETEN VID U-AUNIVERSITET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• M.M.C MANAGEMENT CENTER LIMITED
• ASOCIACION INSTITUTO EUROPEO DE ESTUDIOS PARA LA FORMACION Y EL DESARROLLO
• DIMITRA EKPAIDITIKI SIMVILITIKI AE
• RINOVA LIMITED
• VAN DE WINKEL CONSULTANCY BV