Harmonized Quality Assurance Strategies for Canadian Colleges and Training Providers

Abstract

Rapidly increasing pace of life and the need for learning more, faster and better is calling for higher effectiveness and quality of education. In recognition of this need several Educational Quality Assurance standards have been introduced to the Canadian educational market in the recent years. Amongst those are the CETAC's "Quality Standards for Private Training Institutions", Canada; ANSI/IACET 1-2007 Standard, USA; and the ISO 29990:2010 "Learning services for non-formal education and training. Basic requirements for service providers".

While the standards are not in direct conflict with each other they build on different philosophies and aim at quality assurance issues from different angles. Understanding specifics of standards may help educational institutions in selection of those instruments that better fit their current needs.

Background

The ISO 29990:2010 has been prepared by the Technical Committee ISO/TC 232 and released in September 2010. This is the first ISO standard concerned with quality of vocational, life-long and in-company training. It is based on the popular ISO 9000 series of quality assurance standards and covers essentials of curriculum design, delivery, evaluation and improvement.

The ISO 29990:2010 is endorsed by the Canadian Standards Association along with national standardization organizations of 20 other countries. The standard permits for certification of educational institutions by ISO Certification Bodies around the world.

The CETAC "Quality Standards for Private Training Institutions" are developed by the Canadian Education and Training Accreditation Commission and recently endorsed by the Canadian National Association of Career Colleges.  These standards permit for accreditation of the Canadian private career colleges with the CETAC.

Canadian educational institutions may choose either of the standards for guidance to excellence in education and recognition for the achievement. Certain differences between the standards, however, require better understanding of the issues involved, so that planning and implementation of quality assurance programs is more efficient.

This study attempts to explore similarities and differences of the standards and suggest strategies for development and implementation of quality assurance programs by educational institutions.

Analysis

The study included careful comparison of requirements and focus areas of the ISO 29990:2010 and CETAC Quality Standards. While this comparison revealed very good match between the covered quality issues it also discovered certain conceptual differences in the way the issues were approached.

The ISO 29990:2010, generally speaking, employs "goal setting" approach to regulation when organizations are explained of their objectives rather than directed to a pre-defined set of requirements. The "organization-centered" (in opposite to "requirement-centered") philosophy of the standard mandates educational institutions to determine their pertinent requirements on individual basis, depending on institutions' specific objectives, processes and circumstances.

Since the primary goal of the ISO 29990:2010 standard is continuous improvement through self-regulation, the standard defines a quality assurance model rather than specific conditions of operation of educational institutions.

To ensure organizations can diagnose and troubleshoot their quality concerns the ISO 29990:2010 standard employs a process approach, requiring educational institutions identify, measure, evaluate and continuously improve their processes. This involves monitoring and analysis of key processes of an organization, gathering of factual evidence, prevention and correction of non-conformities and performing other typical quality assurance activities. The major driving forces of such quality assurance system are periodic audits and management reviews.

These concepts empower organizations for taking the full responsibility for their performance and quality of educational services. The same time educational institutions, particularly those with limited organizational capacities or history of operation, might be overwhelmed by the variety of tasks at initial stages of the implementation of the standard, when much pieces of the quality puzzle have to be established.

"You do not know what you do not know" is the main reason of difficulties at the starting point in many cases. The CETAC Standards are just that source of information that could help educational institutions to overcome the initial difficulties and build a solid foundation for further successful development of their quality assurance programs.

In comparison with the ISO 29990:2010 the CETAC Standards are less focused on the quality assurance model but instead provide more specific information on regulatory, educational, administrative and other requirements.

Just as an example of discussed differences the clauses of the standards dealing with regulatory issues could be compared. The ISO 29990:2010 standard calls educational institutions to "… comply with regulatory framework…" (Para 3.1.1), meaning that they have to establish processes for identifying the regulatory framework, monitoring changes, auditing the compliance, taking preventive or corrective actions, evaluating efficiency of actions taken, verifying closure or re-occurrence of non-conformities etc.

The task of identifying the regulatory framework is ambiguous and may affect timeline and efficiency of other processes. The CETAC Standards can significantly expedite these efforts by pin-pointing the areas of regulatory concerns for the Canadian private career colleges. Similarly to the described example, the CETAC Standards specify many other requirements or best practices related to learning.

Same time, the quality assurance model defined in the ISO 29990:2010 standard has unparallel value for effective management and continuous improvement of quality of education.

Knowing that the both standards approach interrelated quality issues from slightly different perspectives and understanding the nature of these differences may help educational institutions to come up with more successful short- and long-term quality strategies.

Conclusions

The ISO 29990:2010 and CETAC Standards do not have conflicting requirements and complement each other in a unique way that provides educational institutions wider opportunities for planning and implementing their quality assurance strategies.

It is our recommendation that educational institutions stage the implementation of their quality assurance programs over the period of time. The CETAC Standards may provide a solid support at the early phases of the quality assurance programs. Further transformation of the quality assurance model based on the ISO 29990:2010 requirements may significantly enhance the performance of educational institutions.

The Canadian Private Career Colleges may achieve the recognition for quality of their educational programs through accreditation with the CETAC and/or certification against ISO 29990:2010 standard.

References

1)      ISO 29990:2010 "Learning services for non-formal education and training. Basic requirements for service providers", First Edition, ISO, 2010;

2)      CETAC "Quality Standards for Private Training Institutions", CETAC Standards, 2011;

3)      ISO 9001:2008 "Quality management systems- Requirements" , Fourth Edition, ISO, 2008.