Documentation expert panel LU - QALLL

Quality Assurance in Lifelong Learning
Thematic Monitoring
Documentation of expert panels
by National Agencies
I
General information/
Date/Venue:
Organising institution(s):
No. of participants:
Types of experts
Rapporteur
08/03/12, Luxembourg, Alvisse Parc Hotel S.A.
ANEFORE asbl
15 (17 registered)
Training providers, public services, consultants
Ms Anne Marie THEISEN, ACORD International s.a.
Ms Karin Pundel, ANEFORE
Attach invitation and programme and list of participants (names, institutions).
II Key issue(s)
The key issues tackled by the panel discussions covered Quality assurance in special areas more
specifically quality assurance of in-service training and adult education.
1. Planning: “Organisation and management”
2. Implementation: “Education and training, qualification of trainers”
3. Evaluation: “Evaluation and recognition of training results”
III Results
III.1 Experiences and Status Quo
The NA had invited representatives from adult education institutions (INL, Prolingua, Service de la
formation des adultes (MENFP), chambers (CSL, CCL,) , Interformation, Reasearch Center (CRP HT),
Sectoral training institutes (IFSB, IFBL), Vocationnal schools (LTC, LTE), Agence qualité of the Men,
INFPC, Mouvement luxembourgeois de la qualité.
6 organisations participated at the meeting as well as the Luxembourg Nqvet representative.
The experts of 6 different organisations presented their experiences with regard to quality and
quality assurance in education and training measures.
State of the play of a quality approach in the sector:
The representative of the national institute for vocational training (“INFPC”) explained that the
founding law of his organisation (1999) mentions the criteria of quality in relation with the
conditions for accreditation of the training institutes. Further the law says that quality needs to be
pursued by the training providers in the evaluation process of their trainings. To show evidence to
which extent quality is assured within their offer, however is not mandatory for the accredited
training institutes.
The INFPC and the public research centre CRP-HT are preparing a national conference on quality in
vocational trainin. The aim of this event is to initiate a debate on quality and to create a platform on
quality in training and education.

Documentation of expert panels
The expert of the sector –based training institute of the building and construction industry (“IFSB”),
which was established in 2002 as a private initiative of entrepreneurs, commented that the provision
of qualitative trainings was essential in order to continue to be supported by the stakeholders
(clients of the IFSB). Trainings offered are aimed at workers in the building industry, at supervising
staff and at pupils in initial training. A new project called “Fit for civil engineering” targets job
seekers. The institute’s offer embraces 200 training modules and reached in 2011, around 2.850
people.
The IFSB is actually in preparation process for a certification ISO 26000.
The representative of the non-governmental organisation “INTER-FORMATION”, created in 2001 as a
lobby of different types of training sector protagonists (around 40 key actors), underlined the fact
that her organisation is eager to adapt the quality recommendation by the European Commission
into practice. She mentioned in this context the elaboration by INTER-FORMATION of a professional
code of ethics in training, a platform called Wiki-E-learning and a training contract (project).
Furthermore INTER-FORMATION is at the stake of investing in a quality approach of the organisation
as well as participating in a reflection of how the VAE process (validation of experience skills) could
be improved in Luxembourg.
The expert of the national language institute (“INL”), which is a state organisation implemented by
law 30 years ago, emphasized the fact that 8 languages were taught and tested at the institute and
that about 10.000 people were skilled through INL a year. The institute is a member of ALTE
(Association of Language Testers in Europe) and offers the possibility to pass examinations in 7
languages. The organisation figures as national language test centre and supervises about 1.500
language exams a year. Training guidelines were developed for 4 languages according to the skills
levels A1, A2, B1 responding to the standards of the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages (CECRL).
The quality principle in training is integrated in the founding law of the institute. The INL requires
that a psychometric language test and certification are done by the learners (“positioning test”). The
ZLSK (“Zertifikat fir Lëtzebuerger Sprooch a Kultur”) is the training certificate for trainers in
Luxembourgish and has been developed by the INL.
The training service for adults (“SFA”) is a department of the Ministry for Education and Vocational
Training. Trainings (languages 60%, NTIC 16%, trainings for senior citizens etc.) are organised at the
level of the municipalities by the cities or by associations. The providers have to assure a certain
quality and have to hold the quality label which is applied by SFA since 2000. It requires the
compliance with a series of conditions as showing a qualitative offer, taking information measures,
providing transparency on content and evaluation etc.
The expert of the public research centre Henri Tudor could stress that the “CRP-HT” was initiating
and actively participating in numerous research projects targeted at quality assurance. The public
research institution positions itself as an innovation facilitator. The centre’s research programme of
human capital (HUM-CAP) is organised under a department called SITec. SITec is the knowledge
transfer and training centre of the organisation. SITec is certified in ISO 9001 in 5 areas (regarding
project management).
Important research projects in the field of quality assurance are among others, EQN (dealing with
training of trainers), SLOT (definition of ECVET/EQF, based upon the methodology transfer of a
Spanish quality norm), Q-Cert-VET (elaboration of a new quality norm).
III.2 Challenges
The following challenges were highlighted by the experts according to the different phases of the
quality cycle.
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Documentation of expert panels
Planning
- Existence of a training culture in companies. Integration of capacity building as a strategic
company goal.
- Dialogue between training providers and clients in order to be able to present a tailor-made
offer.
- Necessity to anticipate the needs and skills’ requirements of the clients.
- Flexibility, adaptability to the training needs.
- Understanding that quality assurance in order to prepare a training offer is a tool and not an
aim.
- Train the communication and pedagogical skills of trainers (e.g. engineers, lawyers, doctors
etc.) and train the company experience of teachers.
- Innovation in pedagogical tools.
- Introduction of skills assessment ex-ante
Implementation
- Timely reaction to the demand
- Adequate reaction to training demands: if the demand expressed by a client cannot be met it
should be clearly said
- Need for trainers to stay client focused and adapt permanently to the trainee’s needs and
level of skills.
Evaluation
Adjust
- Monitoring of training results in-house and sharing feed-back with training providers
- Measuring learning outcomes in behavioural trainings
- Adaption of the skills reference frame
- Facilitate the access and the guidance to the informal validation process (VAE)
- Development of a national qualification framework
- Implementation of an electronic training portfolio
- Organisation of thematic exchanges between trainers
- Adaption of training programmes
- Continuous adaptation of trainers skills to the market needs
III.3 State of the art and good practices
The state-of-the-art in quality assurance in training and education was presented by the experts as
follows.
- A positioning test in languages assures that the participant is guided in an appropriate way to
the training that fits best and permits optimal training outcomes.
- The training provider uses different types of modern communication tools in order to reach
the participants in time (SMS, e-mailing).
- A skills’ reference framework has been developed in partnership with researchers, trainers
and sector representatives in a certain number of specialities (building and construction
industry, IT).
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Documentation of expert panels
- The validation of the training reference framework and its continuous adaptation to changing
needs is done by the sector representatives (construction and building industry).
- There is a networking between training professionals, training providers and sector
representatives with regard to the annual adaptation of the training reference framework in
the building and constructing industry.
- The project EQF aims at defining a national quality framework (NQF) by defining different job
skills. The implementation is aimed at preparing the European Credit System for Vocational
Education and Training (ECVET).
III.4 Recommendations
Following the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that were agreed in the panel
discussions on quality assurance in training and education with the experts, a certain number of
issues should be dealt further in the future.
On the national level
- Facilitation of skills’ recognition gateways (skills equivalences) in a certain number of jobs
(e.g. level B2 in construction is equivalent to a DAB level, …)
- Learning outcomes in adult education and vocational training are linked to an obligation of
results. It would be necessary to link the learning outcomes in initial training above an
obligation of means to the necessity of results.
- The qualification for teachers and trainers in initial and vocational training should require a
related working experience.
- The validation system of experience skills (VAE) should be promoted in a broader way.
- The qualification efforts and possibilities offered for vocational development in the craft
sector and building industry should be communicated more systematically
On the institutional and/or on the European level
IV Additional comments
Here you can give additional comments , e.g. on the process of organising and conducting the expert
panel. Mention features that are relevant also to the topic, i.e. if it was very difficult (or very easy) to
find suitable experts, whether opinions and experiences were very varied or rather homogenous, etc.
Positive points:
- Exchange of good practice: as the participants were very diversified, this WG allowed them
to know of each other’s practices in the field of quality.
- Positive feedback – the WG could be considered as a first step to a national dialogue on QA
in the VET sector.
Difficulties:
- Participation: 8 out of 14 organisations had confirmed their participation though only 6
participated in the end.
- Type of organisations: we choose specifically to have a very diversified public in terms of type
of organisations. Along the discussions it was difficult to establish common benchmarks.
- Time: so to short, it was not possible to plan a whole day event due to the disponibility of
the experts.
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Documentation of expert panels
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V Annex
Invitation and programme
List of participants
Any further relevant documents
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