Guest posting to voced-coord list June 16 - 26, 1997

Item 7 of 10: Coordinators look at quality

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 05:24:18 +1100
To: voced-coord@owl.qut.edu.au
From: Richard Sweet
Subject: VocEd: Richard Sweet (guest) - Coordinators look at quality

Nineteen of you responded to my on-line survey that asked you to rate 29 indicators of program quality on a scale ranging from -3 to +3. Let's begin with what you think detracts from quality. By far the greatest detractor, with a mean score of -2.79, was spending 5 days or less in the workplace per year, and there was almost complete unanimityy on this. (ASTF will be pleased to see that coordinators, even if not as yet all school system personnel, generally support its view that short placements do not lead to high quality workplace learning).

You also thought that program quality is adversely affected if only teachers assess workplace learning (-1.74), if programs are only one semester long (-1.74), if the program is additional to students' normal subjects (-1.84), if the workplace time is used only for observation and experience (-1.89), and if the work placements are entirely undertaken in the students' own time (-1.95).

What about your views on what contributes to quality? Those indicators receiving the highest rating were: assessments counting towards students' school course (2.42), spending 20+ days in the workplace (2.42), results being recorded on the Year 12 certificate (2.47), workplace time being used for structured learning (2.58), having a trained coordinator (2.58), receiving advanced standing in VET or TAFE (2.63), and being accredited by the State's VET authority (2.79).

[If you want the full list with means and standard deviations for each item let me know and I will send a copy - Excel spreadsheet, Word document, snail mail, pigeon post, message stick - let me know what suits].

What surprised me about the results was the strong endorsement of VET accreditation as the (underlined) strongest quality indicator, and the substantial absence of disagreement on this. If it was my choice, I would have focused much more strongly on factors that influence the quality of the relationship between the student, the employer and the teacher: structured learning, authentic assessment, trained supervisors and so on.

It is not that you found these to be unimportant - what surprised me was that VET accreditation was seen as more important. Why am I surprised? Well partly because our experience tells us that most employers neither know nor care much about VET accreditation. They want good quality kids, and they want a good link with the school that supports and helps them to train. When we have asked ex-students about what it was about their course that got them a job, they generally mention the skills passport, the fact that employers knew them, the employer's favourable opinion of the program or of its logbook as evidence of skills - but almost never the fact that the they have a VET accredited qualification. I can see how a program can be a quality one without VET accreditation - but I can also see how one that has VET accreditation but not other key features can be pretty awful. So in rank ordering, I wouldn't put VET accreditation at the top of the list - in fact I would probably put it in the bottom half of mine.

Does anyone want to say why they see it as being so important?

Richard Sweet
Research Coordinator
Dusseldorp Skills Forum
210 Clarence St
SYDNEY NSW 2000
Tel: (02) 267 9222
Fax: (02) 267 7882
e-mail: richard@dsf.org.au