NZQA's contribution to quality in the private tertiary sector
By Karen Poutasi, CE, New Zealand Qualifications Authority
5 September 2006 |
|
New Zealand Association of Private Education Providers Conference
Thank you for that welcome. Congratulations to NZAPEP on this national conference; "Best Practice - Sharing Successes" is an important theme.
It is indeed a pleasure to be with you, given that tertiary private education providers are key stakeholders for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. You are important contributors to education in New Zealand, often showing entrepreneurial flare and flexibility. When you do it well, you can be a touchstone of excellence for an age in which nothing stands still and everything is, or will be, contestable.
Let me begin by saying I need your continued help. As you know, the Government is undertaking broad reforms in the tertiary sector. The reform's biggest impact will be on government tertiary providers. But, Private Training Establishments are involved.
For example, a cabinet paper on this, which, as you will know, is in the public domain, discusses two possible roles for Private Training Establishments as part of the larger tertiary sector. One option, referenced, is the status quo, which the paper describes as Private Training Establishments continuing to offer niche education and training that augments and complements the provision of public providers. The other option is described as, and I quote, "seek to directly define roles such as offering provision to specialized industry areas or meeting the needs of particular community groups".
I am sure you will be discussing these and possibly other roles as you focus in this conference on "Best Practice - Sharing Success".
Once decisions are made about the reforms in general, the changes will impact on the planning, funding, quality assurance and monitoring of tertiary education. As part of this, Cabinet has required that, and I quote "the existing standards used in the quality assurance system be reviewed, in consultation with the sector, to ensure that they are appropriate and consistent and where revisions are required a plan for doing this be developed."
As part of this, we need to tap into your extensive knowledge of the sector and how quality assurance works within it. Already, of course, many of you have made substantial and valuable contributions. You did this by inputting into the review last year of the Quality Assurance Standard One. I thank you for that. Your ideas have impacted on the thinking being applied now and are being fed into the quality work stream for the wider tertiary sector, with an eye, I might say, on compliance costs as well. But still, on a broader canvas, we need your feedback afresh.
First of all, I'd like to hear your views on how the Qualifications Authority's current quality assurance procedures impact on your business. I'd also like to hear how you think this should evolve in the future. And we'd like to know what you think of the ideas I'm going to advance now. I've already met with your national executive, but hearing your views directly would be good too.
In essence, the intention is to adopt a new approach to quality assurance. This will be through - and here I'll use jargon that I'll explain later - self-assessment, external review and validation. Now you might say "This isn't new", and in a sense it isn't, but also there are some new things here which I'll come to.
Let me begin with an anecdote.
Years ago, New Zealand had a regulatory regime for retail banks that was highly prescriptive. It involved detailed inspections of the banks' books by the regulator, and very specific compliance requirements. This was all designed to stop banks lending imprudently and as a result getting in trouble.
Then, in the 1980s, the Reserve Bank came to the conclusion that, in fact, this approach made things worse. It was realized that banks were being incentivised to just tick the boxes and then to put their brains in neutral. Banks were assuming that because they were compliant their duty of care to their shareholders and depositors was fully met.
The Reserve Bank concluded that its quality assurance procedures were actually encouraging bad management and imprudent lending. So a new regime was implemented that said less about rules and inspections and more about the obligations of banks' directors to exercise prudence in governance and to be accountable.
A particular bank chief executive immediately came to the Reserve Bank and, in a state of considerable agitation, condemned this quality assurance initiative. As the story goes, he said "You can't expect our directors to be accountable. After all, they don't know anything about banking." If true, this was outrageous and exactly why the change was needed.
But does this story have any relevance to the education sector? Well, I'll let you judge. But, as I'll outline, we are looking at moving quality assurance of your sector from a "tick the box model" to a greater focus on ongoing quality improvement and outcomes. This is where your "Best Practice" theme comes in.
Feedback already received indicates general recognition that the current system can be improved. The broad thrust is to reduce the compliance burden and to shift to a system that supports both high trust and high accountability. This means an increased focus on continuous quality improvement and on outcomes, using indicators and benchmarks to monitor performance.
At this point, you may say "That's great in theory, but what are the practical benefits for my business and for the sector of which my business is a part?"
I think the answer to that question goes like this…..
Effective quality assurance and monitoring of private tertiary providers gives an independent and external assurance of your quality to those that fund you. For some of you, your funder is the Tertiary Education Commission or other government agencies. For others, it is Industry Training Organisations or other providers through various memoranda of association. And for many of you, it is students and their parents. They all want some assurance that their money is being well spent.
Quality assurance and monitoring should contribute to the promotion of high quality teaching and learning. It should add value to your businesses. The public wants to know that tertiary education in this country is of a high quality and that New Zealand's international reputation as a provider of quality education is protected.
Quality assurance and monitoring should also provide some certainty to both students and employers that the qualifications and courses available are relevant and good quality in terms of the economy and especially the needs of the labour market. We should know that we are providing people with the relevant skills and qualifications for finding satisfying employment or going on to achieve further qualifications.
On the flip side, quality assurance and monitoring provides a way for identifying any providers who aren't following the rules or aren't delivering quality. In extremis, it gives a means to restrict or close down providers who are "beyond the pail". For the sector as a whole, this is a form of protection. Bad providers affect all your reputations.
Bringing this together, as we look ahead, quality assurance and monitoring need to meet two requirements
The first is accountability - in other words, private training establishments providing evidence that required standards are met.
The second, and it's what I want to talk about now, is quality enhancement.
It's a truism that each PTE is responsible for its own fate. This includes making the productivity and quality gains necessary for commercial and professional success. The question is: how can quality assurance from an external agency, such as the Qualifications Authority, assist that process?
Most obviously, one wants systems that avoid excess process and compliance costs.
But also, we need arrangements that encourage effective self-assessment. From the quality assurance agency you need agreed sector quality standards or guidelines, benchmarks and good practice. These need to be set centrally to ensure a consistent standard across the sector. Then, guided by those quality assurance expectations, self-assessment should be built into your strategic planning. Self-assessment should involve the critical examination by you of your performance against quality assurance expectations. It is about creating an internal culture of quality.
It is a clear fact that those who bear a risk best manage that risk. Think of this illustration. You wouldn't trust being a passenger in a car actually driven by someone somewhere else with a radio-linked remote control to the car who is watching the road on a television monitor, would you? The driver wouldn't have enough of an incentive to pay attention. After all, what if he or she wandered off to make some coffee? Likewise, quality is best guaranteed when responsibility for it is located as close as possible to the processes concerned. Embedding responsibility for quality within PTEs leads to opportunities for continuous improvement.
So, if effective self-review is the way to improve performance, how does the quality assurance work of the Qualifications Authority contribute to that?
Your disclosure to us, and our validation of your evidence, are needed to provide rigor to self- assessment. Otherwise, the risk is that the process becomes too comfortable. As the old adage goes "Self congratulation is no recommendation."
External validation of self-assessment is aimed at making judgments about the systems in place to guarantee the quality of each PTE, its courses and qualifications. The validation process uses the results of self-assessment along with other evidence, including performance against common indicators. It tests the quality of the evidence that underpins self-assessment.
External validation can involve various mechanisms. These range from a light-handed review through to a full audit, depending on a PTE's performance. There can be "baseline" approaches that provide assurance about the overall quality of the institution. We can also take a "developmental" approach that targets the aspects of quality of most concern in a particular case.
This allows PTEs to earn greater autonomy where there is evidence that they are capable and required standards are being met. This is how quality improves. The aim is to have a quality assurance system that, where appropriate, operates in a high trust environment that encourages PTEs to take responsibility.
To sum up, the Qualifications Authority judges that the current system has the basic requirements for effective quality assurance. However, we also take the view that to do better still we need to focus on outcomes. That's where the tertiary reforms come in. We need common performance indicators, and benchmarks and indicators that recognize the distinctive contribution of the PTE sector. The system needs to deliver appropriate risk identification, as well as reliable and valid information on processes in place to enable judgments about quality assurance.
At the same time, PTEs need to accept responsibility for undertaking their own self-assessments. After all, taking time out to reflect always helps to lift the performance of individuals and organisations.
If this all comes together as expected, then we will all benefit from a more robust tertiary sector delivering quality to students.
Thank you very much.