Report of the third meeting in Spain, Carthagena
Monday October the 26th – Wednesday October the 28th 2009
Participants:
Rijn IJssel – Regional Educational Centre Arnhem, NL:
Henry Soyer and Jacqueline Bijlsma
Omnia - The Joint Authority of Education in Espoo Region, FI:
Eeva-Riitta Kangasmetsä and Eeva Hellsten
Minster Development Centre Ltd
Allan Clare
Vocational School Carlos III Cartagena, ES:
Conchita Fraga and Ascensión Romero
(from left to right: Henry, Allan, Conchita, Ascencóon, Evaa, Jaqueline, Eeva-Riitta)
Venue
The location of the meeting was the Vocational TrainingCollege Carlos III which offers vocational courses for students, unemployed people and workers who need training. It has 652 students and because of its small building, it is open from 8 in the morning to 21 in the evening.
Spanish information about this project.
Monday
Welcome
We were welcome by the Principal of the school Conchita Fraga and she showed us the school and its premises. It has a total of 300 computers and a beamer in each classroom, as well as some digital boards. When we visited it five groups where not at school because they were doing the three months work training, which is compulsory to get the certificate. The school has the Quality certificate ISO 9001:2000
Introduction and agreement on the agenda.
Household issues
We had previously agreed on the topic for the meeting in Spain and it was Quality control in APL. All of us had been asked to give a presentation on how was quality controlled in our schools/companies and in our countries in general.
PowerPoint Presentation by Spain
It was given by Ascensión Romero, Head of the Instituto de las Cualificaciones de la Región de Murcia. She explained the functioning of this organism and its objectives. One of them is to create a system of assessment, recognition and accreditation of the competences acquired at work. She established the quality factors in APL as:
- Establish, settle or set up rules, procedures, instruments, tools and standards known and shared by everybody.
- Implement these procedures and instruments in the process as it was established with the standards expected.
- Monitor and evaluate each part and the whole process internally and externally, to verify compliance.
Spain relies on legal regulations as a quality factor in the accreditation of professional competences.
Presentation by the U.K.
Allan Clare based his presentation on the platform in internet they use.
All the competences are related there. There is a screen for the worker where he can see the performance criteria and upload the evidence. And a screen for the assessor and when the worker has shown enough evidence the assessor can tick the competence as achieved. The platform tells how many performance criteria are needed for each unit.
Quality is based on verification. The internal verifier checks at least one unit per folder. He/she looks twice at the folder during the process. The external verifier, who belongs to the Awarding Body, also checks each folder.
Lunch
Lunch offered by the school.
PowerPoint Presentation by Finland
Quality is based on the European Common Quality Assurance Framework (CQAF)
Quality control is based specially on the exam candidates have to sit in order to get the certificate. No matter the evidences candidates present, they have to pass an evaluation (simulation, test, etc.) It is a practical exam but candidates have to proof the competences acquired.
Assessment is very much related to taylor-made courses that can last from a few months to two years. A satisfaction questionnaire about the process is also passed to the students/candidates.
Dinner
It was a shared dinner, that is, “tapas” shared by all so that everybody could taste a minimum of 5 dishes.
Tuesday
Visiting good practice
We visited CEEIC, which is an organisation part of a network that started in Holland and spread all over Europe. It works following two streams, first helping people to start a business and secondly incubating starting companies.
- People come with an idea and they help to prepare a business plan. They have engineers, economist, etc. who help to make decisions. The service is free as it is paid by the Regional Government.
- Incubating new companies. There are 35 spaces in 2000 square metres. Companies can stay for three years paying very little money. Three conditions to apply:
1. New company
2. Studied the business
3. Innovation + technology
70% of these companies survive after five years, while the media is 30%.
The organisation is supervised by the Local and Regional Government, Chamber of Commerce, University and the company itself.
PowerPoint Presentation by Holland
They started their presentation with the sentences “You grow faster and more than you think” and “Certificate your experience”. Sentences that are meant for the candidates and which summon up the idea of APL.
Henry arose the question whether there should be just one assessor for each process or a team of two assessors, one with the content knowledge and the other one with the process knowledge. He thinks that it could be difficult to find assessors who dominates both, competences and processes, for all the qualifications that can be certified.
Quality is assured in this way:
Individual assessment:
- Clear instruments of assessment
- Status form (the document where you check that everything included in the procedure has been done)
- Process expert (+ an internal verifier)
- Colleague assistance
Once a year there is an external evaluation.
Lunch
Lunch offered by the school
Final group meeting, wrapping up
We think that it is important that the process of APL is not under valuated and this can be avoided through quality control.
It is important that there is confidence and trust:
- towards the client
- towards the process
As the European Guidelines for the Validation of non-formal and informal learning says, the success of national and local validation processes depends on the level of confidence they inspire. Therefore, as far as possible, national validation processes should be compliant with the European quality assurance principles and the follow up of these. The processes, procedures and criteria used must be fair, transparent and underpinned by quality assurance mechanisms.
A Quality system is needed to check that standards are met in APL. The problem is to find out what are the standards.
And as our English colleague says when judging the validity of evidence, it must be:
- Valid – appropriate and relevant to the unit or element being claimed.
- Authentic – the candidate´s own work
- Reliable – accurately reflects the level of performance which has been consistently demonstrated by the candidate
- Current – sufficiently recent to be confident that the same level of skill/knowledge/understanding exists at the time of claiming the unit
- Sufficient – to show that the candidate can perform consistently to the level claimed, over a period of time, in all requirements of the standards
We realised that APL was interpreted in a different way depending on the country, so we decided to select a few items and check how each country dealt with them. The result was this:
The certificates are given by:
- Holland: the school
- Finland: Government body
- U.K.: the company ( is this correct, not the awarding body? h.s )
- Spain: Regional Government
Competences that can be certified:
- Holland: acquired in the last 5 or 10 years depending on the competences
- Finland: acquired in the last 3 years
- U.K.: acquired in the last 3 years
- Spain: acquired in the last 10 years
Licence to conduct APL given by:
- Holland: Knowledge centre (it keeps register) after inspection of the Audit Committee from the Ministry of Education
- Finland: Qualification Committee (through a contract)
- U.K.: Awarding Body (EDI) (in advance)
- Spain: Regional Government
Certification of learning outcomes:
- Holland: Exam board of the school
- Finland: Qualification Committee
- U.K.: Awarding Body
- Spain: Evaluation Committee
Audit on individual proof of competences:
- Holland: process expert / exam board of the school
- Finland: internal
- U.K.: internal verifier and external verifier
- Spain: internal evaluations and external audits on the whole process
Audit on the whole institution
- Holland: yearly the Government
- Finland: yearly
- U.K.: Awarding body (every 6 months)
- Spain: ISO
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Can competences acquired through training (not work) be certified through APL?:
- Holland: YES
- Finland: Yes
- U.K.: Yes
- Spain: Yes
Requirements for the candidates to be able to apply for APL:
- Holland: Normally 18+, relevant work experience ( e.g. one year paid or voluntary), competent in Dutch
- Finland: legal adulthood, comprehensive school or comparable, work experience, knowledge of Finnish language, suitability for trade or vocational branch
- U.K.: Candidate can ask for ANY evidence to be assessed – it is the role of the APL adviser to advise the candidate as to the likelihood of the evidence being assessable.
- Spain: Level 1 (level 2 EQF) 18 years old and 2 years work experience (minimum of 1200 h.) or 200 h. training. Level 2 & 3 (levels 3, 4 & 5 EQF) 20 years old and 3 years work experience (minimum of 2000 h.) or 300 h. training.
Dinner
Again typical Spanish “tapas”. Like the other evenings, we had dinner sitting in a terrace because the weather was really warm for the time of the year
Wednesday
We had a whole morning and part of the afternoon before the Dutch team had to leave for Alicante to spend the night there and take a flight home in the morning. We decided to go to Cabo de Palos which is a fishing village. First we walked along the beach towards the lighthouse, and up the hill from where the whole coast could be seen. From there we followed the cliffs back towards the village. There we had lunch “paella” sitting outside in the sun with the sea at our side. After coffee we went to visit La Manga, which was originally a stream of sand that divided the two seas, an external and an internal one, Mar Menor. Now there is a road that runs all along it with summer houses at the sides with wonderful beaches all along both sides. At the settled time we dropped the Dutch team at the bus station and the Finnish team decided to go to the harbour and sit there in the sun for another cup of coffee. Everybody had a safe journey home on Thursday.