Quality Assurance in Youth and Adult Training: Improving Practice or Refining Systems?

Abstract

Demands for greater accountability in education and training have led to various attempts to move away from traditional notions of ‘professional autonomy’ and towards a more bureaucratic or Taylorist approach, which favours external inspection and is heavily controlled from the centre. In the post‐compulsory sector, a key feature of this development has been the growing emphasis upon ‘quality’ and ‘quality assurance’ activities.

Many of the existing approaches to quality assurance tend to be based upon industrial models, particularly those used in the manufacturing sector, although their application to public services is contentious. The situation is particularly complex in the area of youth and adult training, where Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), who administer the training budget in England and Wales, are obliged by the Employment Department/Department for Education and Employment to quality assure training provision in line with the formal requirements of TEC Quality Assurance: Supplier Management (TQA:SM). For training providers, this form of quality assurance comes in addition to meeting the requirements of the NCVQ and its Awarding Bodies and, in the case of FE colleges, of the FEFC.

This paper will examine the development of TQA:SM and some of its effects in the first eighteen months of operation. Drawing upon evidence from the quality assurance of training providers in the North West, it will explore the extent to which such procedures have led to the development and improvement of national standards of training quality or to additional bureaucratic controls upon both TECs and training providers.