Social Networks and communities related to quality in education and training 

This Facebook group is for researchers, experts, practitioners and learners, who are concerned with quality assurance and improvement in vocational training & education. The group is founded by the BEQUAL initiative, which is a European network of organisations and persons, who are interested in making vocational education & training more attractive for teachers, trainers and learners and promoting high quality education & training throughout Europe (and beyond).

Link: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=111030802291228

EU projects related to quality in education and training

BEQUAL (Leonardo da Vinci multilateral project)

Quality assurance is a European priority for education and training in order to make the Europe’s education and training systems a world quality reference by 2010. The Common Quality Assurance Framework for VET in Europe (CQAF) is the main instrument for achieving this goal. The application of the CQAF at national /regional systems and at training providers is very limited. In Greece, Spain and France there is no evidence that the CQAF is applied at all, while Germany and Romania there have been some attempts but still there is a lot to do, especially at the level of training providers.

The objectives of the BEQUAL project are to fill this gap by developing:

• an electronic benchmarking tool, which will allow training providers in VET to online benchmark their quality approach against CQAF core criteria and database collections of good practice.
• a web based “quality sharing network” in VET, which will be based on quality profiles gained through benchmarking and will enable training providers to ad hoc search for CQAF compliant good practice matching with their internal quality process.
• a “good practice centre”, which will give access to online Communities of Practice (VET policy makers, VET institutes, researchers and practitioners) and quality sources.
• a thematic portal that will be the main reference point for practitioners, researchers and policy makers that are looking for information for quality assurance in VET training institutes.

The project is expected to have a significant impact on the promotion of CQAF at VET institutes across Europe and on building on-line Communities of Practice. The target groups of the project are VET providers, policy makers and stakeholders in VET.

Website: http://www.bequal.info

VETWORKS (Leonardo da Vinci innovations transfer project)

Following new lifelong learning policies through the past years there’s a rapid growing of VET networks throughout Europe, with a strong tendency to interlocking educational activities across organisations and sectors. Apparently this shift towards multilateral and transversal cooperation in VET calls for new and innovative approaches to joint decision making, shared planning, coordinated implementation and quality control of educational provision.

However the vast majority of instruments and methods of quality assurance available for educational planning, monitoring and evaluation on provider level do not meet the new requirements. They are designed for managing the quality of either individual organisations or discrete training processes and structures, and this way are systematically counting out collaborative quality processes within newly emerging learning networks. Through recent Leonardo da Vinci programme periods the European CERN partnership, with the help of evaluation, planning and management experts has developed a set of quality instruments in order to bridge this gap. Besides research papers, evaluation handbooks and training programmes the EVAL II project with SPEAK produced an strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation tool for VET networks, which in the course of the Leonardo da Vinci pilot project EVAL IV has been tested and validated in collaboration with VET institutes and stakeholders.

The VETWORKS project transfers the SPEAK instrument within a multi-stakeholder approach to national VET networks, and will advance their effectiveness and efficiency by using the European common quality assurance framework as a reference framework for implementation. In accordance with the Helsinki goals, the project intends to improve educational planning and training delivery within local, regional and sectoral VET networks in order to become a world quality reference and develop a common culture of quality improvement.

The VETWORK is promoted by the University of Economics, Cracow, whose transfer partner in Poland is the foundation for the promotion and accreditation of economic education. The partnership falls into 7 highly professional partners from 7 different countries (PL,DE,HU,RO,ES, AT, IE), of which 6 do actively transfer the quality approach to regional / national VET networks while the Irish partner (developer of SPEAK) is responsible for technically adapting the SPEAK tool, supporting implementation units and delivering multiplicator training.

Website: http://www.vetworks.pl/

Quality models in adult eduation: the German case

Over the past years in Germany a broad bandwith of quality models were developed in the field of continuing education. It is argued that the multilayered constitutional, legislative and policy framework of German federalism, causes a differentiation and diversification of approaches to quality. In order to gain more transparency over the increasingly growing "quality market", the German Institute for Adult Edcuation within the joint initiative of the standing conference of ministers of culture and education recently has elaborated an overview of the most relevant quality approaches in adult education. Please find the article below (German language):

veltjens06_01.pdf