Quality Maintenance, Enhancement and Assurance | quality review guidelines

To achieve this, we have to ensure that all our activities are geared toward ensuring our

  • Services are delivered professionally and to a high quality
  • The delivery of our services contributes to both the personal development of our learners as well as to the overall social, economic and cultural development of Dublin City

To achieve our mission we have to look at our key activities which facilitate the achievement of this mission – this is reflected in our strategic commitments relevant to further education and training:

  • promoting professional excellence in teaching and training, and quality outcomes in learning
  • providing a positive, agile, empowering working environment
  • encouraging staff development
  • recognising achievements at every level
  • promoting professional excellence in our education and training support services and in our administration
  • promoting professional excellence and quality outcomes in youth work services
  • delivering education and training, and supporting youth services that are inclusive, multi-denominational, and bound by an appropriate relationship of care and respect.
  • responding to the needs of the learner as economic, societal and employment needs emerge. The personal needs of the learner i.e. to improve their literacy for personal reasons. They may in that process and to achieve that end, undertake modules at levels 2 and 3.
  • embracing individuality, diversity, and inclusivity
  • advocating civic, social, community and global responsibilities
  • advocating for student, staff, parent and community participation in City of Dublin FET College education, training

What is a Quality Assurance System?

The term “quality assurance (QA)” describes

“the processes that seek to ensure that the learning environment (including teaching and research) reaches an acceptable threshold of quality. QA is also used to describe the enhancement of education and training provision and the standards attained by learners.”[1]

UNESCO defines quality assurance (QA) as

“…an ongoing, continuous process of evaluating (assessing, monitoring, guaranteeing, maintaining and improving)…”[2]

Quality assurance is about assuring and enhancing quality in the learning environment to ensure it meets appropriate standards and the standards attained by learners.
For our quality enhancement and assurance system to be effective, it should be geared towards helping us achieve our mission/strategic objectives.

The purpose of the QQI Statutory Guidelines and their underpinning principles is to help inform providers (City of Dublin FET College) to help inform providers when developing an effective quality assurance system for their context and purposes. The aim of the quality assurance system is to ultimately enable City of Dublin FET College to ultimately to enable its mission:

“To provide professional high-quality education and training services for people in Dublin city that contributes both to the personal development of the individual as well as to the overall social economic and cultural development of the city”.[3]

To achieve this high quality, we must ensure the following:

  • our programmes are designed, developed, and adapted where necessary to meet the needs of learners and contribute to the economic, social and cultural development of Dublin City
  • the way in which we deliver our programmes of education and training, and related services meets the needs of our learners and contribute to the economic, social and culture development of Dublin City

The effectiveness of our quality assurance and enhancement system should be judged by the degree to which it helps us to achieve the above goals. There are many stakeholders involved in contributing to the quality of our programmes and the way in which they are delivered to learners. These stakeholders include:

  • Teaching/Training, support and administrative staff
  • Centre Management
  • City of Dublin FET College FET Support Services – Quality Assurance FET Development Unit/ Professional Development (PD)/ Employer Engagement/ Digital Learning-TEL/ Psychological Services/ Outdoor Education Service/ Data Analytics/ Learner Support and Engagement Service
  • Corporate Services – HR/Finance/Procurement/Building and Maintenance
  • Community/industry partners
  • Higher Education Institutions
  • Sectoral Partners/Representative Bodies– FESS/ ETBI/ ETBs/ HEIs/ QQI/ Dept. of Further, Higher Education, Research and Innovation/ NGOs

Many of these stakeholders are both beneficiaries of City of Dublin FET College’s quality assurance system and key contributors to it. Teaching and learning are at the heart of what we do, and many of these stakeholders directly contribute to this in over 70 FET centres across City of Dublin FET College.

Key Aspects of Quality

Embedding a Quality Culture

It is essential that a positive quality culture is protected, promoted, and embedded at all levels of our services. This can be described as the totality of City of Dublin FET College’s teaching and learning community working in a coherent and cohesive way towards implementing the quality agenda. City of Dublin FET College is committed to the active development of a culture which recognises the importance of quality, quality assurance and quality improvement and enhancement. The development of this culture requires:

  • a holistic approach towards quality assurance where continuous improvement is key. Procedures that are integrated into the normal activities of City of Dublin FET College, with minimum unnecessary administrative requirements.
  • a commitment to the provision of adequate resources to enable and facilitate the implementation of the quality assurance procedures, the consistent application of these and quality improvement plans.

A balanced, organisation-wide approach to the implementation of quality assurance procedures to ensure that:

  • the burden of procedures does not obscure the purpose of establishing a quality culture.
  • a standardised approach does not obscure the ownership and primary focus on quality improvement.

Self-Evaluation: Monitoring and Review Procedures

Self-evaluation, which includes procedures for monitoring and review is an essential part of a quality culture, allows us to listen to our key stakeholders and reflect on our practice, to celebrate our successes and identify areas where we need to develop our practice further.

It is important that we have an open community that values critical reflection and fosters personal and professional development for both learners and staff.  This reflection is a positive part of our annual cycle of activities. Self-monitoring procedures include:

  • A system of appropriate quality measures:
    appropriate quality measures are identified as those which can be checked in monitoring, for example, learner satisfaction ratings, completion / certification rates, relevance of outcomes to the marketplace, error levels.
  • Gathering evidence of achievement of objectives:
    when objectives are set, consideration is given to the kind of evidence or information required to determine whether or not the objective has been met, and how and where and by whom this information will be obtained. Information systems will be important sources of data.
  • Consideration for prioritising objectives:
    important objectives are prioritised even where they are difficult to achieve or to quality assure. Quality assurance is not limited to addressing easily assessed objectives nor committed to addressing inconsequential ones.

Acting on Findings

The evaluation outcomes are used to produce a Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) which sets out a schedule of actions to be undertaken following internal evaluation. It identifies the person(s) responsible for actions and follow-up.

It opens the reporting avenue for staff, centres, and service spheres to input to the City of Dublin FET College through its governance structures for quality assurance.

Monitoring is considered to be:

A continuing function that aims primarily to provide managers and main stakeholders with regular feedback and early indications of progress or lack thereof in the achievement of intended results. Monitoring tracks the actual performance or situation against what was planned or expected according to pre-determined standards. Monitoring generally involves collecting and analysing data on implementation processes, strategies and results, and recommending corrective measures [4].

Self-Evaluation is defined as:

Any process or methodology carried out by a (of a FET provider) FET provider under its own responsibility, to evaluate its performance or position in relation to two dimensions:

  1. an internal dimension (ʻmicro levelʼ) that covers services, internal staff, beneficiaries or clients, policy and/or internal organisation, development plan, etc.; and
  2. an external dimension (ʻmacro levelʼ) that covers analysis of the educational offer of this institution compared to others: relationship with the territorial system of actors (local decision-makers, unions, local governments, type of labour market and needs of VET, information network, type of populations interested in a learning offer and evolution of the needs, main results of work at national and European levels in the VET sector)[5].

City of Dublin FET College is committed to the processes of evaluating its own performance and centre lead programme self-evaluation processes are part of legacy centre level procedures. There is also a monitoring and self-evaluative dimension provided for in the procedures for conducting Exam Board and Results Approval Panel meetings, in terms of reviewing how programmes have performed over the previous cycle. These procedures have been extensively reviewed and re-developed to strengthen the processes at College and Centre level. It is the aim of City of Dublin FET College to strength these processes further.

City of Dublin FET College conducted an Executive Self–Evaluation on quality assurance at corporate level. The findings of this can be accessed here: Executive Self-Evaluation City of Dublin ETB. Since then, there has been an inaugural review in 2022.

The City of Dublin FET College Quality Improvement Plan:

Centres are required to monitor courses from the perspective of programme validation, course approval and information to learners. A monitoring and self-evaluation tool was created for this purpose and issued to all centres.

Quality Maintenance Enhancement and Assurance; Self-Evaluation, Monitoring and Review Policy and Procedures
In June 2020, City of Dublin FET College carried out a review of the impact of Covid-19 on teaching, learning and assessment. This report is available here: Informing The Future – Review of City of Dublin ETB’s Reponses to the COVID 19 Emergency

References:

[1] QQI (2016) Statutory Quality Assurance Guidelines, April 2016/QG1-V2, page 2

[2] UNESCO (2013) Quality Assurance in Higher Education, page 1

[3] City of Dublin ETB (2023) City of Dublin Education and Training Board Service Plan 2023, page 3

[4] UNDP Evaluation Office (2002) Handbook on Monitoring and Evaluating for Results, page 102 

[5] Cedefop (2011) Glossary: Quality in education and training, page 159