improving quality

Improving Quality Reducing Bureaucracy 

The Improving Quality Reducing Bureaucracy Group is a sub-committee of the ColegauCymru / CollegesWales Board. Its members are drawn from the CollegesWales Board as well as representatives from DCELLS, the National Training Federation for Wales (NTFW) and Estyn. The Group's remit is to oversee the development and implementation of the Self Regulation Strategy and to monitor its progress. The Group also acts as an assurance/validation group for activities and progress; it engages actively with DCELLS, Estyn and other relevant bodies to ensure future inspection/quality frameworks meet the needs of the sector; and it works with Estyn, DCELLS and other relevant bodies to reduce external regulation.

Aims

  1. Self Regulation should ensure that existing practices or sources of evidence are effectively used in raising quality to compliment existing quality systems and to avoid duplicating and bureaucracy. 
  2. The roles and obligations of the CollegesWales Board, IQRBG and member institutions should be clearly defined and agreed. 
  3. Member institutions should agree protocols and obligations to enable CollegesWales to be a conduit for disseminating information and good practice therefore providing tools for self regulating.
  4. Benchmarking, sharing of data and best practice across Wales should have the aim of ensuring that learners complete their courses and achieve their qualifications and should reflect the diversity of the different member institutions.
  5. Data from benchmarking should identify best in class and identify weaknesses which require support.
  6. Activities for sharing good practice should be extended to disseminate good practice with external organisations such as NIACE and NTFW.

History: 2005-2009

Reducing Bureacracy

The Welsh Assembly Government expects all public service providers to become increasingly more efficient every year. One area that needs to be tackled in order to achieve greater efficiency is the amount of regulation and red tape. Not only the amount of red tape that the FE sector faces but also the way in which it is managed.

In Wales, following a unanimous call from governors of FE colleges and institutions in Wales, CollegesWales – with the support of the Welsh Assembly Government - led a Bureaucracy and Red Tape Reduction Group that looked to save public funds by tackling red tape. The Group's report, published in 2007, received the full support of the then-Deputy Minister for Skills, John Griffiths AM.

The Bureaucracy and Red Tape Reduction Group merged with the Raising Standards through Self Regulation (see below) in 2009 to form the Improving Quality Reducing Bureacracy Group (IQRB).

Self Regulation

In 2005 FE colleges in Wales agreed to support an initiative called “Raising Standards through Self-Regulation”.

On behalf of all the colleges, ColegauCymru / CollegesWales led two self-regulation pilot programmes (Sept05 - Mar07), funded by the Welsh Assembly Government's Common Investment Fund.  The main activities were Peer Assessor Training and benchmarking of data.

In 2007, the colleges agreed that the self-regulation initiative should continue and that its funding should be internalised; that it should apply to all colleges; and that ColegauCymru / CollegesWales should have a central role in co-ordinating and supporting the initiative.

Key outcomes

  • FE Benchmarking project
  • ACL Benchmarking project in collaboration with NIACE
  • Review of LLWR fields through management information systems (MIS) network
  • Sharing of data through Advanced Level Information System (ALIS) consortium
  • Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales (CYMAL) toolkit for learning resource centre (LRC) managers
  • Best practice database
  • ColegauCymru / CollegesWales Moodle (online resource for members)
  • Working closely with Estyn and DCELLS on the new quality frameworks for 2010

Improving Quality Reducing Bureacracy

mission statement:

to work towards achieving excellence and enabling all our member institutions to achieve this target.

This will be achieved through benchmarking, sharing good practice, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and identifying and challenging weaknesses in the sector.

key activities:

  • Benchmarking
  • Celebrating success
  • Sharing best practice
  • Embedding of the National Bilingualism Strategy for FE
  • Strategies for non engagement
  • Maintaining and improving quality
  • Reducing unnecessary bureaucracy

 key contact:

  • Berni Tyler, CollegesWales

  • CollegesWales Moodle (members only)

ColegauCymru, Uned 7, Cae Gwyrdd, Greenmeadow Springs, Tongwynlais Caerdydd, CF15 7AB. E:helo@colegaucymru.ac.uk Ff: 029 2052 2500
CollegesWales, Unit 7, Cae Gwyrdd, Greenmeadow Springs, Tongwynlais Cardiff, CF15 7AB. E:hello@collegeswales.ac.uk T: 029 2052 2500