SELF-ASSESSMENT AS A QUALITY MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR EDUCATIONAL AND TRAINING ORGANISATIONS

Abstract With regard to Vocational Education and Training (VET), some of the central issues to come out of the Copenhagen Process were how to improve trust-based transparency and quality in VET and in the labour market. Due to its discourse-based total quality conception, the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) Excellence Model is one of the favourite quality schemes in the pedagogic field, notwithstanding an initial rush toward ISO standards in the 90ies. The Leonardo da Vinci Project SAETO (LI-05-B-F-PP-164510), hereafter referred to as "the project" developed a software application for self-assessment in educational and training organisations (ETO) that adapts the EFQM model to the educational sector and links it with ISO 9000 -all within one assessment process. The use of this software solution is supported by an e-learning environment. The project aims at a structured introduction and implementation of the SAETO self-assessment solution in Liechtenstein covering more than 50% of the national ETOs, and pilots in Austria, Germany and Slovenia with at least 8 ETOs in each of these new regions. Moreover, the implementation of SAETO will help to strengthen the deployment of the Common Quality Assessment Framework and will provide references throughout the partner regions as well as a showcase for a fully structured deployment in one country, namely Liechtenstein. Target sectors and potential beneficiaries of the project are: • Educational and training institutions in partner countries. These could use the new training programmes as a part of their training courses or educational initiatives (or the TI-SAETO concept which is focused on the special needs of small ETOs) to serve different customer groups such as internal and external trainers, teachers, apprentices or students, projects or initiatives in the educational sector, • Other organisations and institutions who could use the final products, and • Trained users of the programme who could use the SAETO delivery style to work more closely with their target group. This group includes social care units, educational organisations and non governmental organisations working with socially disadvantaged groups such as the unemployed, homeless, addicted, ex-offenders, children of the streets, etc. This project comes at a time when Europe is stepping up its efforts to establish systematic quality policies across all levels of the education and training systems (Common European Quality Assessment Framework) in all member states of the European Union. The countries participating in this transfer project have very different pre-conditions and levels of experience. Liechtenstein is the first country to seek to cover its entire education and training system by using the SAETO selfassessment approach based on the former Leonardo da Vinci project; in Slovenia SAETO will be used for the first time. Portugal and Austria have experience exclusively based on industrial applications of the basic product GOA, but no experience using the SAETO education-and training-specific application. Thus, each of the partners contributes a unique national and disciplinary perspective with regard to further adaptation and fine-tuning required in order to allow fast and easy adoption of the offered solution across the various regional ETOs. At the same time, the partners' different technical backgrounds will lead to further enhancements to the product, which in turn will improve subsequent SAETO versions. The target groups for implementing SAETO are vocational and educational training organisations that want to bring a greater transparency and quality control to the services they offer and that need to be certified according to ISO or EFQM. Due to the demands of CQAF (Common Quality Assessment Framework in VET), this will apply to more and more ETOS over the coming years. Individual users include managers of training organisations as well as the trainers who will be directly involved in surveying customer satisfaction, and, conversely, trainees who will give feedback on classes attended; also employees who are involved in the TQM process as part of their daily work. Other, indirect users are the external stakeholders of each ETO who will become involved in the organisation's development via satisfaction surveys. Once the process and tool has been successfully validated and valorised, consultancy groups will have an additional tool at their disposal for improving the competitiveness of EU member organisations in all of their diverse cultural, social and legal dimensions