Transcript Document

Quality and Qualifications
Ireland and its Functions
Presentation by QQI at the IAHIP Colloquium on
Statutory Regulation, Standards and Training
20 October 2014
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Mission
Our mission is to promote the
enhancement of quality in Ireland’s
further and higher education and
training and quality assurance
providers.
QQI supports and promotes a
qualifications system that benefits
learners and other stakeholders.
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Broad Goals
• Establish a comprehensive, coherent set of QQI policies
and procedures with the NFQ (National Framework of
Qualifications) as a central organising feature.
• Prioritise learners in its policies and actions and in its
relations with stakeholders.
• Quality assure providers and support the enhancement of
the quality of education and training provision.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to create greater coherence
within and between Ireland’s education and training
systems and with its qualifications system.
• Provide relevant, timely and comprehensive information
to the public on the quality of education and training
provision and qualifications.
• Build an organisational culture to enable QQI to perform
successfully.
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Quality Assurance
• Span: external quality assurance of
both higher and further education
and training
• Remit: all public providers and
elective private providers
• Approach: tailored guidelines and
criteria with NFQ as an organising
principle
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NFQ
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NFQ Standards and Guidelines
• At QQI, we maintain the NFQ (National Framework of
Qualifications) as a system of levels for relating different
qualifications (i.e. awards) to one another
• These levels are described in terms of general (nonsubject-specific) indicators of a person’s knowledge, skill
and competence (i.e. standards for their learning
achievements).
• We maintain NFQ Award-type Descriptors that specify
learning achievements in a general way for all the types of
awards recognised in the NFQ.
• We may issue NFQ Guidelines to support the
interpretation and implementation of the NFQ and its
Award-type Descriptors.
• We also set Awards Standards for our own QQI awards
and those made by providers to whom we have delegated
authority (DA awarding bodies).
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QQI Awarding
• Awarding body for nearly 800
providers
• Higher Education: broad awards
standards—more like frameworks
• Further Education: standard for
each named award but policy is
evolving
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NOW STAND BACK FOR A WIDER
VIEW
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Qualifications System
• Qualifications systems and related concepts –a
QQI background paper (May 2013)
• A Qualifications system involves “all aspects of
a country's activity that result in the
recognition of learning. These systems include
the means of developing and operationalising
national or regional policy on qualifications,
institutional arrangements, quality assurance
processes, assessment and awarding
processes, skills recognition and other
mechanisms that link education and training
to the labour market and civil society…” (OECD
2007)
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A complex adaptive system!
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Qualifications
• ‘Qualifications are social constructs more than they
are technical constructs; they are based on deeply
rooted social relations and practices and political
interests (Raffe 2009a). They are also complex
entities, with multiple and changing functions
(CEDEFOP, Coles et al. 2010). Their effectiveness
depends on familiarity, reciprocity and, above all,
trust (Young 2002, Young and Allais 2009) – all of
which tend to develop in the context of practice, in
relatively stable institutional contexts, over a period
of time. The appropriate metaphor for the reform of
qualifications is therefore organic, based on
horticulture rather than engineering.’ (Raffe, 2013)
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Occupational Standards
• Here ‘occupational standard’ means a
standard of knowledge, skill and competence
that must be achieved to qualify or license a
person to practise in a specific occupation.
• An education and training programme and
award may be designed to prepare a person
for entry into an occupation. Education and
training programmes and awards may also be
designed for practitioner development
purposes. Such programmes and awards (and
awards standards) benefit from the existence
of detailed and up-to-date occupational
standards.
• Contrast with educational standards
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NOW FOCUS ON PROFESSIONAL
BODIES
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Professional Body
• Any kind of stable organisation, association or
institute having, as its defining function, the
exercise of a recognised and legitimate role in
the support of the profession
• Concerning professional practice, knowledge,
technology, governance, ethics, standards,
regulation, promotion and such like
• Incipient professions can emerge
spontaneously where there is a critical mass of
people with shared interests. Progression
towards stability can take time and must be
achieved by the profession itself as it matures.
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Professional Recognition Body
• Sections 13 and 14 of the Qualifications and
Quality Assurance (Education and Training) Act
2012 deal with relations between QQI and
professional recognition bodies
• A PRB "means a body (including a professional
association, professional institute, or any
other professional organisation) required or
authorised by or under a law of the state to
supervise or regulate the conduct of persons
engaged in a profession"
• All Competent Authorities are PRBs.
• A PRB may or may not be a professional body.
• A professional body may or may not be a PRB
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Recognition of Professional
Awards Within the NFQ
• Professional award-type descriptors
• Policy published in 2014
• Currently planning to look at
accountancy awards
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NOW FOCUS ON THE COUNSELLING
AND PSYCHOTHERAPY PROFESSION
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QQI Award Standard for
Counselling and Psychotherapy
• Published in July 2014
• Standards for higher education qualifications
• Developed by an expert group involving the
professional bodies concerned directly or through
the PTF
• Extensive consultation
• The standards will be used by QQI validation panels
(and those of bodies with delegated authority from
QQI to make awards concerned) when
recommending whether a new programme should
be validated for a specific qualification in counselling
or psychotherapy.
• Other bodies may use these QQI awards standards
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QQI Award Standard for
Counselling and Psychotherapy
• In developing the standards it has been assumed that
counselling and psychotherapy can each be served by a
common framework of standards.
• The awards standards have been designed to
accommodate the diversity of current approaches to
counselling and psychotherapy and indeed future ones.
• They emphasise expected learning outcomes which apply
to all theoretical orientations in both counselling and
psychotherapy.
• The awards standards make no attempt (beyond the
stated assumptions) to define counselling and
psychotherapy or distinguish between them. These are
matters for the professional associations and any future
statutory regulators.
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Thank you
For further information please see our
new website www.qqi.ie
Peter Cullen [email protected]
Framework Standards and Guidance
Qualifications Services
QQI
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