Peer Review Impact Analysis Report - Peer Review in European VET

Peer Review Impact Analysis Report 229 Choice of quality areasDuring the first Peer Review pilot phase, some VET Providers chose three and more quality areas.Evaluation of the pilot phase showed that the breadth of the topics to be evaluated had not posed aproblem for the VET Provider but had put undue stress on the Peers (little time e.g. was left foranalysis). In one case, the Peers agreed with the VET Provider to limit the quality areas to three. Itwas then recommended not to include more than two quality areas in order for the Peers to be ableto conduct in-depth investigations. Thus, after 2006, VET Providers usually chose two or at the mostthree quality areas. In the Peer Reviews under scrutiny, the average number of quality areas chosenwas three. The case where only one quality area was chosen, two diverse and very comprehensivetopics within this quality area were defined. So in fact, this Peer Review had the same scope as theother Peer Reviews.The European Peer Review Manual stipulated that at least one of the four core quality areas (QualityAreas one through four) had to be chosen. This rule was adhered to by the Vet Providers. The QualityArea chosen by almost all VET Providers (12 out of 14) was Quality Area 2: “Learning and Teaching”,followed by Quality Area 1: “Curricula” (9 of 14) and Quality Area 3: “Assessment” (6 of 14). QualityArea 7: “Institutional ethos and strategic planning” was chosen by 3 VET Providers, Quality Area 8:“Infrastructure and financial resources” and Quality Area 14: “Quality management and evaluation”by two VET Providers each. The other Quality Areas – except for Quality Are (Learning results andoutcomes) as 4 and 5 (Social environment, access and diversity) – were chosen once: . QA 6 Managementand administration, QA 9 Staff allocation, recruitment and development, 10 Working conditionsof staff, 11 External relations and internationalisation,12 Social participation and interactions,13 Gender mainstreaming 3More than half of the institutions additionally formulated special evaluation questions for the Peers(57%), the others relied on the Peer Team to derive suitable questions from the self-evaluation dataand the criteria and indicators in the Quality Areas chosen.Table 12:Quality Areas: Decision-making processCase Studyneeds and interests ofintended users consideredmanagement support06_03_DK Yes Yes06_05_IT Yes Yes06_06_IT Yes Yes06_08_NL NI NI06_09_NL NI NI06_10_FI Yes Yes06_11_FI Yes Yes06_14_RO Yes Yes06_15_UK NI Yes3Throughout all 25 Peer Reviews carried out during the three pilot phases, only Quality Area 4 was not chosenat all.Gutknecht-Gmeiner 2010Peer Review Impact2009-1-FI1-LEO05-01584