Profile of VET organisation

Name of organization: Commercial School of Wood Technology - Stuttgart

Email: [email protected]

URL: http://www.holz.s.bw.schule.de

 

Country: Germany

Type of VET institute:

No of staff:

No of trainees:

Quality Management Dimension

Planning tools for teaching assignments and course schedules

Baseline / problem

After a joint strategy of school development (vision) had been implemented, self-evaluation methods subsequently were elaborated. As for this quality criteria and indicators for measurement and quality control were needed.

Good practice: (Measures, instruments, criteria, indicators)

Measures:

In order to improve the situation and meet better the above challenges, the previous “wishlist” (introduced in 2000/2001) had been replaced with detailed questionnaires, which is intended to be a more viable instrument for the elaboration of teaching assignments. The questionnaires relate both, the assignment of teaching hours in the upcoming school year, but also experience made in the previous school period. In addition face-to-face clearing sessions with teachers are offered by the school.

In order to allow the integration of a broad range of relevant factors, some basic parameters were fixed:

• New teachers will be available for teaching with a few hours per week.
• Teaching fellows will be responsible for a school class, which turned out a good development opportunity towards becoming a full teacher.
• Classes will be continued, if possible, as this is educationally meaningful.
• Classes, which end up with a certain degree are distributed as evenly as possible.

Teaching assignments will be fixed at the first weeks of the school holidays, and made available to the staff concerned. A feedback form is added to each assignment document, so teachers can apply for amendments or make suggestions for changes. Necessary changes will be applied until the last week of school holidays latest; teachers will be contacted individually in cases, such as conflicts or variations of the original plannings.

Complementary to the teaching assignments a questionnaire also was introduced for the scheduling of courses, following the same principles. The school schedule will be published during the last holiday week (black board). On Friday, before school starts in a casual conference the plannings will be explained in detail and further discussed with the entire teaching staff. Teachers can use feedback forms in order to request for changes, which will be evaluated by the school management and implemented before school starts or during the first weeks after. If the proposed changes should not be possible, it will be thoroughly discussed with colleagues and solutions will be sought. Special priority is given to the concerns of colleagues, who have family obligations.

Problems and constraints encountered and solutions found:

It was not possible to solve all concerns to the satisfaction of the teachers. However as for the simplified questionnaire the response rate is quite high and the analysis is more simple than with a “wishlist”. About 20% of the teachers concerned use the offer for individual sessions, which has proved very successful. Misunderstandings or faulty planning in the allocation of teaching hours and scheduling of courses decreased significantly in number, while the overall degree of satisfaction increased.