Quality Management Survey 2004
The Results of Survey on Quality Management in Finland in Year 2004 Conducted by FNBE
Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) conducted an inquiry on the Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement in the autumn 2004 in order to collect information on Quality Assurance in Finnish VET for further development activities. It was an open inquiry targeted to all VET-providers in Finland. However it wasn’t mandatory to answer. Number of respondents was 111 (82 VET-providers).
EFQM Model or Some Combination Based on EFQM Model
In the survey have been monitored how many of the VET-providers have a systematic self -evaluation system and how many apply different QM-systems based on those results more detailed the model reflecting it to the CQAF-model. Main conclusion is, if you compare the results with results of the survey made about three years ago the share of VET-providers who have some kind of systematic self-evaluation system and the use of different Quality Assurance methods has raised clearly.
How Systematic Is the Quality Work?
According to the survey made by FNBE in the autumn 2004, EFQM was by far the most commonly used Quality management -method. Around 68% of VET-providers had some experience with it. Since 2001 the authorities have recommended the European Excellence model (EFQM) to be adopted by VET-providers. Many of them use a combination or application of different approaches, often based on EFQM Model. BSC was the second popular Quality management -method with a share of 45% of VET-providers using it. The methods have been used both by the schools and the providers. A combination of EFQM and BSC was considered important, as well. As to the use of the ISO-standard, it has been mainly used in Finland in the technical field.
Most important Quality Assurance methods in the Finnish VET, %; FNBE, 2004)
Peer Review as a Method
As a whole, the Peer Review-method has not been widely used in Finland, and also the knowledge of Peer Review -method is rather small in Finland. According to the inquiry made by the Finnish National Board of Education in November 2004 only 37% of the Finnish VET-providers took part in the survey, knew about Peer Reviews and only half of them had had some experience with the review. Furthermore, 55% of the providers did not know about the Peer Review -method and 73% of the whole group of respondents had never tried to use it as part of their Quality Assurance and Quality Development -processes.
BSC Model
BSC-model is used by many VET-providers. One of the reasons is that many municipalities use it in strategic management process. The figure below shows the length of experience of VET-provider using BSC-model.
The respondents have also been asked to report on future needs and challenges of Quality Management. Following issues and challenges were most often mentioned:
- to motivate and to commit the managers and the staff
- to ensure enough resources for Quality Management
- to describe the key processes of education and training
- to manage by processes
- to measure the results of learning and teaching processes
- to develop the systematic feedback procedures
- to identify good indicators
- to analyse and to evaluate the results and make decisions based on results (development activities)
- to implement BSC-model and combine it with EFQM Model
- to promote the co-operation and exchange of good practice
- to make quality work into everyday practice.