Review - Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research

Executive summary
Project purposes and methodology
This project examined the quality assurance mechanisms for the vocational education and training
(VET) sector used in five nations: Canada (Ontario), Germany, New Zealand, Singapore and the
United Kingdom (UK). The mechanisms used by these nations have been compared with those in
Australia to identify best practice.
Personnel in each of these countries who are working in or have worked in VET and who have a
comprehensive knowledge of their national systems were either contacted to assist in the development
of a system overview or commissioned to provide a report. These reports were supplemented with
email communications and telephone consultations. Reports for each of the nations have been
provided as appendices to the report. In the case of the UK, this includes separate reports for England,
Wales and Northern Ireland, and for Scotland.
Quality assurance systems
The report notes that quality assurance systems are a key feature of national VET systems with their
active and heterogeneous training markets. There are developmental processes for and dialogues on
VET quality assurance across several of the study nations. Those across European Union (EU) have
been especially active and have been stimulated by the Bologna and Copenhagen processes, the
development of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), associated developments in credit
transfer and the validation of non-formal learning. They also include the establishment of a common
quality assurance framework.
Quality assurance in VET has multiple purposes including those of probity and financial
accountability, health and duty of care, user protection, quality improvement and system
effectiveness, and the quality status of VET products, providers and systems.
Broadly quality assurance mechanisms can be described as front-end input mechanisms or back-end
output mechanisms. Front-end systems are designed to ensure the quality and authenticity of VET
programs, and the quality, effectiveness and integrity of training providers. Output mechanisms
concentrate on the quality of the training product. Responsibility and authority for quality assurance
mechanisms can be located in industry partners, government and its agencies, providers and other
agencies including awarding bodies.
National context
The quality assurance systems used across the six nations (including Australia) are influenced by the
constitutional and administrative structures and processes of government. Three of the nations are
federations and one is a unified nation state. The distribution of policy and administrative policy
between two levels of government is different in each of these four nations. This variance includes the
responsibility for education and training, and as a consequence the distribution of quality assurance
functions.
Nations also have different governance cultures that are the product of their different histories and
their geo economic contexts. These cultures are also influenced by traditions of state—civil society
relationships—which in VET include the role of the industry partners. In all nations, industry bodies
have some role in quality assurance, mostly in standard setting.
The constitutional structure of Canada locates all responsibility for education and training with the
provincial governments. Therefore Canada does not have a national VET system and this study has
concentrated on Ontario, which is the largest of the provinces with 40 per cent of Canada’s
population. Within the UK, Scotland has long had separate responsibility for education and this has
been consolidated with the establishment of the Scottish parliament. Therefore, Scotland is treated as
a separate nation and case study within this report.
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