Self-Assessment as a Quality Manangement Tool for Educational and Training Organisations

Quality in Vocational Education and Training (VET) is one of the central issues of the Copenhagen Process towards more trust-based transparency and quality in VET and in the labour market. Due to its discourse-based total quality conception, the EFQM Excellence Model is one of the favourite quality schemes in the pedagogic field, after an initial rush for ISO in the 90ies. The Leonardo Project SAETO (LI-05-B-F-PP-164510) developed a software-supported system for self-assessment in educational and training organisations (ETO) that translates the EFQM model to the educational sector and links it with ISO 9000 in one assessment effort. The solution is supported by e-learning modules. Due to the national and sometimes even regional autonomy of the education system in Europe there is a need for well structured deployment of the developed solution in as many regions as possible to allow a successful roll out. To support this, the proposed project aims at a structured introduction and implementation of the SAETO solution in Liechtenstein (FL) covering more than 50% of the national ETOs, and a piloting in Austria, Germany and Slovenia with at least 8 ETOs in each of these new regions. A special focus in the piloting will lie in supporting the special needs of vocational schools (Berufsschulen) that follow the approach of the “Dual System”, the backbone of vocational training and education in all German speaking parts of Europe. The partnership for this project consists of one ETO of each of the target regions. Besides piloting a validation, the project will carry out a cultural adaptation of the SAETO solution to the requirements of the new regions and add a bilateral satisfaction survey on the co-operation of the industrial companies and the vocational schools that form the partnership for the Dual System. Another focus of the project will be on the reimplementation of the existing CBTs with the aim to better address the needs of early adapters instead of expert users. To do so, one of the project partners is a University with a specific focus on e-Learning. As a result it is expected to have SAETO adapted and validated for 3 more European regions as well as to implement it as an accepted standard solution in Liechtenstein on all levels of education and training. Moreover, the implementation of SAETO will help to strengthen the deployment of the Common Quality Assessment Framework and will deliver both reference cases throughout the partner regions and a showcase for a fully structured deployment in one country, namely FL.