Report template country research - Russia
QM&CQAF - The expansion of the EU-approaches to providing the partner-countries higher education quality assurance Expanding Quality Assurance
Content
Introduction 3
National context 4
1 Target group the research aims at and definitions used 6
2 Profile of respondents and respondents organisation 8
3 Good quality of education: what does it mean? 11
3.1 Respondent’s definition of good quality of education 11
3.2 Respondent’s most decisive criteria for good quality of education 11
3.3 Existing measurements of quality 15
3.4 Respondents example of good practice in which these criteria are reflected / clearly respected 16
The most notable practice 19
4 EQAVET indicators in use 21
4.1 Effective use of the EQAVET cycle 21
4.2 Use of EQAVET quality criteria/descriptors 24
5 Indicators used in the EU provider model on quality of education 27
6 Main challenges regarding improvement of the quality of education 31
6.1 Main challenges and support needed 31
6.2 Main challenge regarding teachers involvement and support needed 32
6.3 Remarks made by the interveiwers 34
7 Conclusion on the use EQAVET indicators and CQAF VET indicators 35
7.1 Decisions and key indicators of the quality education at nation level in the Russian Federation 35
7.2 The most important indicators for providing high quality education according to providers 35
7.3 Similarities / differences with EQAVET indicators 35
7.4 Similarities / differences with CQAF VET indicators 36
7.5 Suggested amendments / replacement for the model 36
Annexes 1. Participant list 38
Annexes 2. Profiles of the respondents involved 40
Annexes 3. List of the main regulations related to education in the Russian Federation 63
Annexes 4. Respondent’s definition of good quality of education 64
Introduction
The project is aimed at the development of quality assurance model for the higher education oriented on enhancement of interaction between universities and national labor markets, and at dissemination of this model in the Project member-countries (Croatia, the Russian Federation, Belarus). In enables to extend the European approaches to the quality assurance to countries participating in the Project.
To achieve the set objective of the Project the first task is adaptation of the CQAF concept to specifics of the Higher Education in Croatia, the Russian Federation, and Belarus. It demands to collect the information about future QM&CQAF model providers and parties concerned primary reaction QM&CQAF model application, QM&CQAF model components and typical bottle-necks advance, backgrounds and improvement resources. The information has been gathered by means of the internet-interviews and direct activities with later MS Excel processing. The results have been analyzed and visualized with infographics to complete the national report for Russian Federation.
Basic stages of the study:
1) The Internet questionnaire design;
2) Interviewing the survey respondents;
3) Including the interview results and the Internet questionnaire;
4) The first stage of the analyzing the interview results;
5) Clarifying several replies;
6) The final analysis of the interview results;
7) Making-ready the report about the survey (national report).
Some respondents asked to let them fill in the Internet – questionnaire on their own with a following specification of the replies that are not full or not precise enough.
Overall time for interviewing 32 respondents (including those that completed the questionnaire on their own) is 35 hours, i.e. in average 66 minutes for a respondent.
National report about this survey is a part and a source of the raw data for the consolidated report on the primary reaction QM&CQAF model application, QM&CQAF model components and typical bottle-necks advance, backgrounds and improvement resources.
National context
In Russia, higher education quality assurance are defined primarily by the Federal Law "On Education in the Russian Federation" dated 29.12.2012, № 273-FZ and implemented at both the federal and regional governments, as well as at the level of educational organizations. Policy authorities in respect of education quality assurance support community organizations.
At the federal level, the main responsibility for ensuring the education quality assurance lies with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (Russian Ministry of Education) and the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor). In accordance with the Federal Law # 273 "On Education in the Russian Federation", they realize three functions relating to the provision of guarantees of the quality of education, namely:
- licensing;
- supervision and
- state accreditation.
At the same time the Russian Ministry forms a normative framework (a system of regulations that determine the organization and implementation of activities in higher education programs, the procedures and criteria for monitoring and self-study, federal state educational standards, etc.) and performs the function of education management based on established criteria and quality indicators. Rosobrnadzor provides licensing, monitoring and control of state accreditation of higher education programs.
Along with the quality of public administration education FZ-273 provides for the development of quality assurance systems to ensure that the principles of voluntariness. This activity is supported by the Ministry of Labour of the Russian Federation (Russian Ministry of Labor) and the Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology (Rosstandart). Law "On Education in the Russian Federation" as a system for independent quality control through a system of regional public councils.
The National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is created with the support of the Ministry of Labor of Russia. NQF is administered by the National Council under the President of the Russian Federation on professional qualifications (NCPPQ). The main instruments of the NQF are professional standards that serve as an independent assessment of qualifications, as well as for professional public accreditation of professional education programs (including higher education programs). NCPPQ is formed from representatives of major employers, authorities and the public. In its activities the NBTS is based on industry boards (now the Council on the professional qualifications in 22 key sectors of the economy), which form a system of independent assessment of the quality of education on the basis of the rules (principles and requirements), approved by the NCPPQ.
Rosstandart supports the process of recognition of the quality of educational activities through the distribution of quality management standards (ISO 9001) at the level of educational organizations. Currently, more than 60% of Russian universities have quality certificates ISO 9001 international (obtained in certification within the international network IQNet bodies).
In addition, FL-273 allows for the existence of the Russian market and other independent evaluation systems, particularly professional public accreditation of programs and public accreditation of educational institutions in accordance with the law employers can conduct tips, created on the basis of public associations and professional associations.
In general, the process of ensuring education quality assurance in Russia is implemented in two successive stages: the management of the process of formation of professional competence and the provision of accessible and transparent procedures for independent assessment and recognition of the quality of education outcomes.
For quality assurance, the first phase of the group established the criteria by type of educational organization. In particular, at the federal level of self-indicators are divided into groups:
- educational activity (average score on the input and output of the process, the proportion of students enrolled full-time, the proportion of teachers with academic degrees and titles, etc.)
- research activities (citation metrics, publication activity, absolute and given to one teacher revenues from scientific papers)
- International activities (share of foreign students, the proportion of international revenue projects)
- financial and economic activity (total and per unit revenue by type of activity and source of funds, including one student and one teacher)
- infrastructure (including security indicators of student equipment and premises).
The state holds an annual monitoring of the effectiveness of high schools where self-indicators are used, but along with these key indicators is the "employment", the average salary of teachers. In carrying out the procedure of independent assessment of the quality of education there are four groups of indicators characterizing the openness and availability of information; comfort conditions; kindness, courtesy and competence of employees of educational institutions; satisfaction with the quality of service recipients.
The second step in the evaluation of professional qualifications obtained characterize compliance professional qualification standard.
List of the main regulations related to quality assurance in higher education is given in the Annex 3.
1 Target group the research aims at and definitions used
The research target audience is represented by HEIs employees (32 respondents) that deal with quality of education in their professional life, including 8 specialists directly involved into QMS:
Figure 1.
According to the level of education there are the following groups of respondents:
Respondent categories / 03 – BA / 04 – MA / 05 – specialists / 06 – post-graduates / Totalmiddle managers / 1 / 5 / 6
faculties / 11 / 11
QMS specialists / 2 / 6 / 8
TOP / 1 / 1 / 5 / 7
Total / 1 / 1 / 3 / 27 / 32
In the interview two definitions of a high quality education have been used.
The first definition is the definition suggested by a respondent himself/ herself. This definition has been used to encourage a respondent to speak judging from one’s own experience and concept of a quality education. Five different definitions have been received (adding their variations) that are described in issue 4.1.
The second definition is a standard definition that is being used by the European Commission as far as quality of education is concerned: “Quality of any educational institute depends on the capacity to achieve prior set targets”[1].
These definitions let us organize a more purposeful discussion about diverse markers of EQAVET criteria and CQAFVET model from one and the same point of view.
Respondent showed an inconsistent approach to understanding quality as ability of an institution to achieve its goals:
1. Only 39 out of 145 quality education criteria (see issue 4.2) that equals to 27% are connected to achieving goals, while all the rest are the criteria that form (67 references, 46%) or describe desirable operational climate (18 references, 12,4%). Remaining 21 references (14,5%) concern quality education in an indirect manner or have no connection at all;
2. Quality education measurements are hardly ever used (see issue 4.3);
3. In EQAVET descriptors achieving the goals that have been previously set is not described enough as well;
4. An analysis of the application of various quality education activities (see issue 6) shows that respondents judge applying the activities concerning interests, level and interaction with students as the lowest. Activities reflecting quality of elaboration and implementation of curricula and academic results recognition are estimated a bit higher. Act for activities reflecting structure and work performed by faculties and tutors, they are estimated quite high. And the highest group is represented by activities concerning different aspect of administering education institution.
2 Profile of respondents and respondents organisation
32 respondents from 23 HEIs have been interviewed. The interview has been conducted in 15 regions of the Russian Federation (Transbaikal and Krasnoyarsk Territories, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orel, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Tomsk and Yaroslavl regions, Republic of Bashkortostan, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg).
Figure 2. / Top-managers (7 people or 22%), heads of departments (6 people, 19%), faculties (11 people, 34%) and specialists (8 people, 25%) have been interviewed. The respondents have been taking up their posts for:- less than 5 year – 12 people (37,5%),
- from 5 to 10 years – 13 people (40,6%) and
- more than 10 years – 7 people 21,9 %.
The interview participants represent in majority of cases state higher education institutions (30 organizations) and only two private HEIs.
Respondents replied that the highest level of education that their HEI curricula cover is 06 - post-graduates (27 people, 84,4%) and 05 – specialists (9,4%). Only one HEI prepare 04 – MAs (3,1%) and another one 03 - BAs as the highest level of education (3,1%). / Figure 3.
Some respondents reported that their organizations deal with further and adult education exclusively (19 people, 59,4%). 13 respondents (40,6%) said that their HEI implement other programs as well.
Average age of HEI students is 21,7 years.
The survey participants are from the HEIs with more than 300 employees (27 replies, 84,4%) or from 50 to 299 (5 replies, 15,6%).
/ The biggest HEI according to the number of students represented in the survey is federal state-funded educational institution of higher professional education Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation that teaches about 80 thousand students a year.Figure 4.
The smallest HEI is Ivanovo chapter of federal state-funded educational institution of higher professional education The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration that teaches 700 students. The image shows the number of students studying in the HEIs a year.
Average rate of students hat quitted the HEI is 6,2%. At the same time in 14 HEIs (43,8%) there are less than 5% and in 7 HEIs (21,9%) there are more than 10% of such students. One of the responded couldn’t answer this question.
Figure 5. / The respondents were from the HEIs that perform education programs on humanities (71,9%), social (62,5%), technical (56,6%), natural (46,9%), medical and agricultural (15,6%) sciences. Majority of HEIs perform their programs in more than one sphere that is why a sum of these rates is much higher than 100%.Majority of respondents reported that their HEI is certified according to ISO 9001 (23 replies, 72%). The reasons for using ISO 9001 model are the following:
- optimize and improve the activity of a HEI;
- improve the quality of education;
- improve the administration effectiveness and potency;
- add to the HEI prestige and its competitiveness;
- as a toll for proving high quality education services according to the stakeholders requirements;