QUANTUM project partners organized focus groups on Quality Assurance (QA) in vocational education and (VET) during March 2021. The aim of the focus groups was to confront quality assurance in VET, specifically ways of collecting feedback among stakeholders and systems for tracking graduates along the VET-labour market route.
The focus groups were attended by the main actors from the VET sector at the regional and national level – public authorities, social actors and VET providers – who we would like to thank for their active and dedicated participation. Focus groups were held in Slovakia, Austria, Italy and Portugal.
We collected many suggestions and reflections, which we will evaluate through project activities thanks to better cooperation between stakeholders and the creation of a territorial quality network.
There is a short summary of the outputs from each country.
Slovakia:
- It is necessary to strengthen dialogue and good-practice exchange in the field of QA in VET among stakeholders at the national level
- Representatives of self-governing regions have expressed an interest to cooperate in the field of Peer Review
- Graduate tracking and the implementation of the results of the tracking into the practice is considered as an important mechanism of QA in VET. Participants welcome the efforts to strengthen this mechanism in Slovakia.
- The lack of teachers of vocational subjects. This is perceived as a crucial problem by all participants.
Italy:
- A strong discrepancy between the knowledge and recommendations elaborated at the institutional level, and the actual factual implementation of such directives at the level of VET providers and enterprises;
- A significant disparity among the various Regions.
- Necessity of making aware VET providers, employers’ associations, social parts and enterprises of QA and EQAVET indicators
- Need to promote the culture of lifelong learning among enterprises.
Austria:
- EQAVET is little known in VET institutions
- VET providers have experience with the Peer Review method (PR), such as PR in schools, the development of PR in Austria, EU projects, or the development of new PR courses at universities, etc.
- Peer Review is little known in companies
- Graduate tracking – participants expressed doubts about data protection and centralized data collectio
- Participants expressed the need to specify the recipients and other details of graduate tracking
Portugal:
- Limited capacity to monitor the outcomes of VET provisio
- Limitations of the mechanisms described to track graduate pathways
- Peer Review methodology needs to be acknowledged and used in Portugal at a national level.
