Exploring Quality Assurance for Technical Education

An analysis of several European quality assurance systems for post-16 technical education explores key themes, including the engagement of social partners. Insights from the report may be of interest in shaping thinking around the role and structures of Skills England – a new body that ‘will bring together key partners to meet the skills needs of the next decade’ (DFE, 2024).

This new report commissioned by Gatsby Charitable Foundation was written by Professor Chris Winch and Dr Nuala Burgess (School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College, London). The report explores quality assurance in Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, and also the background and purpose of the European Quality Assurance for Vocational Education and Training (EQAVET), and its impact on the national systems of these three countries.

Professor Winch introduces the report here:

Whilst each of these countries is a nation state with its own distinctive traditions of skills formation and technical education, they nevertheless share some features in common, which can also be found in other European nations. They all embody, in their different ways, social partnership structures and practices. The report findings show that a coordinated and consensual approach in distinctive national form can be found across all three target countries. In Part Two of the report, this approach is compared to the system for quality assurance for technical education in England. The study used background academic literature, policy documents and informant testimony to gain an understanding of the EU approach and those of three European countries. Interviews were undertaken with officials from EU institutions and policymakers and participants in the countries investigated to build up a picture of the nature and functioning of national systems and the influence that EU institutions had on them.

 It is always perilous to assume that a policy that works in country A will work in country B and therefore it would not be wise to assume that the quality assurance systems examined in this report have immediate relevance to improving the quality assurance of technical education in England. Each country’s quality assurance system is embedded in its national system which in turn is embedded in the economy, culture and political system of that country. Sometimes factors that are difficult for a researcher to see are critical to the success of visible processes. It cannot be assumed that the same factors are present in England. That said, it is still worth looking at features of the quality assurance systems of these countries and of the EU, to start a discussion about if and how they could be adapted for use in the English system. This section highlights the features of the quality assurance systems of the EU, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway that we think could be relevant to the English context.

1. Social partnership and associated high levels of trust

Germany, the Netherlands and Norway all rely on a form of social partnership to ensure quality. Employer associations, trade unions, regional and state administrations work together with a joint commitment to ensuring quality – even though their interests do not always coincide. Where they do not, they tend to seek collective solutions through compromise and discussion. In this way, all parties have a common interest in the operational quality of the system. Quality assurance is not so much a solely, externally driven process as a feature of the day-to-day running of the system itself. Although the UK is an outlier in Europe in terms of its social partnership structures, it has in the past experimented with forms of social partnership, such as after the introduction of the 1964 Industrial Training Act.

2. Proper enforcement of existing regulations

There is some indication that existing legislation and regulation is being inadequately enforced, which is contributing to a decline in the quality of technical education in England. The use of social partner scrutiny of the operational practices such as on-the-job and off-the-job learning, assessment, occupational profiling and qualification design could go some way to mitigating such problems that can arise through a lack of political will, interest group lobbying or lack of funding.

3. A limited use of market mechanisms as a means of securing accountability

England has made extensive use of market and quasi-market mechanisms to ensure accountability and quality. These have included competitive bidding, institutional competition and external publicised inspection. These practices arose within the framework of public choice theory and its implementation through new public management. Although these approaches have also gained some traction within Europe, they have not come to dominate quality assurance in the way that they have in England. It is worth examining whether new public management techniques are impeding rather than enhancing effective quality assurance.

4. A stable and well-understood system that undergoes evolutionary reform

None of the systems that we have looked at are static. All adapt to changing social, economic and technological pressures. However, they do this without making frequent large-scale reforms to qualification design, the mode of technical education (work- or college-based) or the form of assessment, thus ensuring stability. Adaptations are given a chance to bed down and the public are familiar with the system and trust it. Just as important, those who use and work within it are also familiar with its strengths and weaknesses and are thus in a position to implement incremental change where necessary. The English system is characterised by frequent changes being made to its organisational structures, reporting protocols, qualification design and regulations. This impedes the embedding of stable and participatory quality assurance mechanisms.

5. External peer review

Both the European Training Foundation (ETF) and EQAVET use elected peer review as quality assurance mechanisms. While individual countries are understandably protective of their own quality assurance mechanisms, they also recognise that it is possible to overlook features of their system that they are overfamiliar with and which could benefit from improvement. By hosting a peer review, a country invites experts from other countries to look at aspects of their VET that they judge may require attention. Response to recommendations is not mandatory, but the suggestions may prompt debate and reflection that lead to change in quality assurance practices. In addition, a peer review allows countries with long-established systems, such as the three countries that took part in this case study, to support developing countries keen to learn from more experienced stakeholders. The rigour with which a country must prepare for hosting an EQAVET peer review, including a self-assessment of the peer review process, had been instrumental in Germany’s Bundesinstitut für Berufsbilding (BIBB, the Federal Institute for Vocational Education) producing a report on quality assurance processes for company-based training.