Review - Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research

Financials
To be registered, a private college must provide the ministry with a required amount
of financial security. There are three types of financial security that can be posted
under the Act:
• a surety bond guaranteed by a surety company
• a letter of credit issued by a bank or financial institution that is
supervised or examined by the central bank of Canada or another
governmental authority in Canada
• a personal bond accompanied by collateral security issued by Canada or
by any province of Canada.
There is also a Training Completion Assurance Fund, which will replace the old
financial security requirements with an insurance fund plus a reduced financial
security requirement. This assurance fund appears to work similar to Australia’s
ESOS Assurance Fund.
Quality
assurance
approach
Renewal of registration
Private career colleges are required to renew their registration with the Ministry of
Training, Colleges and Universities annually based on their fiscal year-end date.
This was a process introduced under the Act.
To ensure student protection and quality in the private career college sector, a
quality assurance framework is under development. Currently quality assurance
approaches are included below.
Program standards for private career colleges
The ministry is currently developing the first program standards for private career
colleges. A program standard will apply to all similar programs of instruction
offered by private career colleges across the province. Program standards are aligned
to the Ontario Qualifications Framework (OQF)1. The private career college
program standard consists of:
• vocational standards (the vocationally specific learning outcomes which
apply to the program of instruction in question)
• essential employability skills (the essential employability skills learning
outcomes which apply to all programs of instruction).
Collectively, these elements outline the essential skills and knowledge that a student
must reliably demonstrate to graduate from the program. 69
Performance accountability measures
The private career college Act stipulates that every private career college shall make
public, at the times and in the manner determined in accordance with the
superintendent’s policy directives, the information required by the policy directives
relating to the performance indicators and performance objectives applicable to the
college’s vocational programs.
The indicators are similar to AQTF quality indicators and cover student satisfaction,
graduation rate and employer satisfaction.
New performance accountability measures are being developed for the sector after a
69 The ministry has identified priority programs for the development of standards. Following this procedure, the
first standard, the “Tractor-Trailer (AZ) driver program”, has been developed and is due to be released this year
together with two other program standards.
Comparisons of international quality assurance systems in vocational education and training Page 78 of 115