Project Financed Under Phare

EUROPEAN UNION

Project financed under Phare

MERI/ NCDTVET-PIU

Activity 08

Training in Quality Assurance

Training and Advice for Further Development of the TVET Sector, Romania,

PHARE TVET RO 2006/018-147.04.01.02.01.03.01

2009

Developing Romania’s skills and knowledge: New directions for quality assurance in VET provision

Introduction

Vocational education and training provides skills and knowledge for work, enhances employability and assists learning throughout life. The clients of VET provision attach importance to clear links between learning, skills development and employment. They expect nationally recognized qualifications, which implies nationally recognized skills standards, defined in dialogue with industry, that cover most occupations and guide the design of training and assessment. As adult learners are becoming a growing group that benefits from continuous VET provision, customised products and services to meet their particular needs are needed as well as active measures to address barriers to their learning. Clear pathways to and from vocational education and training, schools, universities and adult education are becoming increasingly valued in this context. These purposes of modern vocational education and training can be only achieved through rigorous quality assurance arrangements, agreed and applied nationwide.

Context

Romanian educational authorities have been continuously engaged in reforming and modernizing the VET system and quality assurance and quality improvement has become one of their key policies. In 2006 a Law on quality in education was adopted, providing the necessary legal background for the implementation of this policy. Three factors in particular prompted Romanian authorities to pursue the development of a common quality learning system for VET at pre-university and higher education levels:

·  First, while good efforts have been made to develop understanding and awareness of the appropriateness of accommodating EU policy principles and practice into the national learning environment, a more sustained effort has been required to ensure Romanian’s policy alignment with EU developments in broader workforce development, employment and human capital developments.

·  Second, in order to ensure that public and private education will contribute to a learning economy, better integration of services (education, training, university, research environment, entrepreneurship learning and enterprise-based training) is required to maximise the potential of broader human capital development in the medium to longer term.

·  Third, the fact of European Integration brings with it the challenge of Romanian economy heading into competition within the EU and beyond. A quality learning system based on the confidence that Romanian enterprise can ensure a flexible and productive workforce is therefore set to be an important pillar of Romania’s competitiveness drive. Central to this is the increased transparency of qualifications and the enhanced mobility and equity of Romania’s students and workers.

Romania’s recent economic development resulted in a growth of the GDP of 8.6 % in 2008, one of the highest in Europe, and ensured a fall in unemployment rate of 3.6% - the lowest since 2003 with percent change of -33% for the last 5 years.[1] Romania’s vocational education and training system has made also a contribution to the country’s economic success. This contribution, however, needs to expand and grow stronger in the next period, when national businesses will continue to need highly skilled, productive workers to compete successfully in the global market.

Today, a strong economy demands more skilled employees. There are needs in occupations ranging from modern farming, construction building, plumbing and electrical, to food processing and tourism and hotel services. The careers forged in these types of occupations and industries have traditionally been viewed as “second class” to careers obtained through university study. Nevertheless the VET system has grown in sophistication, it is still struggling for prestige, and recognition of its achievements. Vocational education and training in some occupational fields is increasingly a first choice for many of the young Romanians who do not go directly from school to university. More efforts are needed to continuously progressing many more VET qualifications alongside this path in the future.

In its National Development Plan 2008-2010 the Government has set a new and challenging agenda for vocational education and training, where the quality of provision is given a high priority. In 2008, the Government announced new initiatives to provide for skills needs in various fields. These initiatives target an increased access of unemployed to continuous VET training programmes; provision of easy transition of young people from school to labour market; increased access to quality learning in a lifelong formatted systems with emphasis on providing skills required by the labour market; development of tools for long-term forecast of occupations and skills and strengthening the system of career information and counseling in schools and public employment services.[2]

If successfully implemented, these measures would help people to progressively realizing that a vocational qualification can lead to a challenging, diverse, and rewarding career. With the support of the European Union Structural Funds, the Government will have a unique opportunity to build on its successes to date, and ensure the training system continues to improve – providing the skilled people required by industry and business to keep Romania’s economic growth strong.

Following the actions undertaken by the previous government to strengthen the educational sector by increased support, the Ministry of education, research and innovation focused on the following priorities:

- Ensuring equal access to education and preventing early school leaving;

- Assuring quality in education and enhancing the relevance of education and

vocational training to meet labour market requirements.

- Promoting lifelong learning.

- Increase the capacity of TVET to respond/ adapt to the labour market

requirements;

- Improve the teachers and trainers’ qualifications;

- Extend the use of ICT in education.

In 2008, the legal framework regulating “exercise firm”/“simulated enterprise” was improved by the endorsement of the MERI Order no 5109/2088 which regulates the integrated approach to simulate further and higher education relevance to business needs. The enforcement of this order’ provisions, starting with the school/ academic year 2008/2009 assures a better coherence regarding the use of this approach to the training in primary, secondary and further education levels. The skills obtained through “exercise firm”/“simulated enterprise” can shorten the new employees adaptation period at the working place, which is to the benefit of both the future employees and employers.

The capacity for achieving learning system that can respond to the rapid changes of the labour market, together with the assurance of quality in education, are critically dependent on the quality and the level of qualification of the human resources

employed in education and on the initial and continuous vocational training. Improving the teachers’ qualifications and competences has continued to represent a priority in 2008 for MERI, as part of its quality assurance policy.

Regarding the TVET staff training in the field of quality assurance, under TVET 2005 and 2006 Phare projects, 227 teachers and 196 quality monitors and school inspectors have been trained in 2008 and additional 148 teachers and 50 quality monitors and school inspectors- in 2009.

Stakeholder Roles

At the institution/provider level the Commission for Evaluation and Quality Assurance (CEAC) is established with responsibilities for coordination of internal self-assessment process, development of Self-assessment report, its submission to external monitoring and verification. Subsequently, its main conclusions and recommendations form the basis of an Improvement Plan, which forms part of the School Annual Action Plan (SAP).

At the local/ county level School Inspectorates are responsible for the organization of external monitoring visits and the production of external monitoring reports with recommendations for improvement. At this level also Local Committees development of Social Partnership are established, who are involved into the development of Local Plans and are monitoring the implementation of SAPs.

At the central level the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university level (ARACIP) is assigned with the key role in promoting and applying the policies regarding quality of education and training. The Agency is responsible for external evaluation, authorization and accreditation of education providers and for a periodic follow-up in every four years of the quality. ARACIP also develops, in consultation with stakeholders, a set of standards and criteria for the evaluation of quality, on the ground of which it makes its accreditation decisions.

An important role in disseminating information on recent European and national developments in the field of VET QA is assigned to the National Group for QA (GNAC), established in 2006 as a national response to ENQA VET recommendation. GNAC is responsible to provide information on ENQA VET activities to the relevant stakeholders, to facilitate and support the implementation of CQAF in the Romanian context, to raise awareness about benefits of using the principles, methods and criteria for QA proposed by CQAF model, to support the organization of peer learning visits at EU level, and develop proposals and recommendations for improvement in QA of VET to relevant stakeholders. GNAC functions as a National Quality Assurance Reference Point for VET and serves as a contact point for ENQA-VET.

The National Centre for the Development of Technical VET (CNDIPT) supports TVET providers and inspectorates in their internal and external quality monitoring activities through the development of specific for the TVET sector methods and tools for quality assurance and develops recommendations for TVET schools’ quality improvement.

The Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation (MERI) is responsible for the development of national policies and strategies for the development of education and VET sector in particular, and coordinates their implementation at national level. As the key political instrument of the Romanian Government, MERI submits to the Parliament annual report on the national education system and proposes measures for development in pre-university and university education.The Minister of Education, Research and Innovation has the power of granting accreditation through a special order, based on the ARACIP proposal.

With respect to quality standards and overall quality assurance methodology, the Romanian Government is the statutory body authorized with the power to approve or reject for further development QA methodologies for pre-university and higher education and hence plays a key role in the overall process of development, submission to the Parliament and implementation of the legal and regulatory basis for quality assurance.

National VET Quality Assurance Arrangements

This section outlines the key elements of Romanian quality assurance arrangements for VET. Currently, these elements include:

Þ  Providers’ internal quality assurance processes:

o  Internal monitoring;

o  Self-assessment;

o  Follow up, which includes the development of improvement plan and revision of the school action plan.

Þ  External quality assurance processes, coordinated by:

o  School inspectorates (dealing with external monitoring of the quality of study programmes, validation of VET providers’ self-assessment reports and approval of their improvement plans);

o  Romanian Agency for quality assurance in pre-university education (ARACIP) – dealing with authorization of new providers and new programmes of study and the accreditation of existing ones, based on external evaluation of their quality.

In Romanian VET system the quality concept is associated with learning outcomes, defined to fulfill stakeholders’ expectations: students, parents and employers. The National Quality Assurance Framework (NQAF) complies with the provisions of the Law on Quality in Education and consists of principles, methodologies, mechanisms and processes through which the quality is ensured at the system and provider level.

It must be pointed out that at present the NQAF with all of its elements and principles is applied only at the level of technical vocational education and training (TVET) level, where the NQAF has been also developed in line with the European Common QA Framework for VET (CQAF) and with the new developments of its successor EQARF (European QA Reference Framework for VET).

The NQAF introduced quality assurance principles, standards and procedures based on the Common Quality Assurance Framework (CQAF) which were applied in Initial VET/TVET. This Framework was piloted in 2003 and fully implemented in 2006-2007. During the Pilot phase two important instruments had been developed to support implementation of quality assurance mechanisms at provider level and TVET in particular: the Self-assessment and Inspection Manuals. Manuals were piloted in the period between 2003- 2006 in 172 TVET units. Starting with the school year 2006-07, due to the encouraging results obtained during the pilot phase, the then Ministry of education, research and youth decided to apply these instruments across all the TVET units. In 2006 the process of alignment of NQAF requirements with the requirements of the Law 87/2006 commenced. This alignment contributed to making the quality assurance standards more comprehensive and understandable and their relationships with the European standards better correlated.

The NQAF introduced the 7 quality principles that characterize the CQAF model at provider level, namely:

o  Quality management;

o  Management responsibilities;

o  Resource management;

o  Design and review of study programmes;

o  Teaching, practical training and learning

o  Assessment and certification of learning achievements;

o  Quality evaluation and improvement.

Each quality principle is provided with a set of performance indicators, based on quality criteria. Their implementation is ensured by two main quality assurance processes: internal, or provider level, and external, or independent level.

At internal provider level, the QA process incorporates planning, implementation, self-assessment and improvement phases, presented in a closed quality control ‘loop’ in the diagram below:

At external level, the QA processes include external monitoring (coordinated by School Inspectorates) and provisional authorization and accreditation (coordinated by ARACIP).

Accreditation of the pre-university education units (including TVET) is organized in line with the Law 87/2006 provisions. Any legal entity, public or private, interested in providing education, is legally obliged to observe the assessment and accreditation process. In the pre-university education, the accreditation is performed at the level of institutional structures for each level of education, each type of study programme and each vocational qualification, as the case may be.