Profile of VET organisation

Name of organization: BK für Wirtschaft und Verwaltung der Stadt Herne

 

Country: Germany

Type of VET institute:

No of staff:

No of trainees:

Quality Management Dimension

Task matrix for Vocational school (Berufskolleg)

Baseline / problem

After a series of interviews with staff, students and companies within a two-year benchmarking project comprehensive empirical results were available in order to start with the implementation of quality management. Even a rough analysis of the results showed that a package of measures needed to be addressed in the areas of leadership and information management, customer satisfaction and use of resources, in particular, however, new management and organizational structures had to be developed.

A complementary analysis of the school potentials provided a large number of identified strengths and suggestions for improvement. The school in a first step concentrated on a few important measures, pooled proposals for improvement, and rendered those elements into action plan priorities. The school by doing this in particular took into account priorities, which refer to several criteria in the EFQM model in order to maximize the scope of improvement.

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

Improvement areas were defined as follows:

  1. Communication
  2. More time for communication
  3. Leadership team
  4. Delegation
  5. Reproval / criticism
  6. Classification of decision-making processes
  7. Communication Culture
  8. Clarification of decision contexts

Improvement goals were defined as follows:

  1. Communication should reach recipients on time
  2. Relief from routine tasks
  3. Distribution of tasks among several shoulders
  4. Delegation of duties, responsibilities and competence, raising awareness for the principle of delegation on the side of colleagues and school management
  5. Strengthening potentials for reflection
  6. Reduction of ad hoc decisions
  7. Improvement of the "internal PR" / increase of transparency
  8. Fostering acceptance and understanding through adequate representation of explanatory contexts

Ongoing and planned improvements:

  1. "Outsourcing" of information into folders and / or additional pin board in the media room / scheduling of announcements / written documentation (even of short notes) / structuring of information by color schemes / increasing the use of new technologies (Intranet) / structuring content of bulletin board by week days.
  2. Use and maintenance of the task scheduler according to the task matrix / tasks are checked for potential delegation / increased email / fax communication for routine communication.
  3. Delineation and coordination of areas within the responsibility of the management team / advanced notice of communications and meetings of the extended school board.
  4. Training for managers / liability of the decisions taken by responsible persons, responsibilty to school principal / changed culture of responsibility.
  5. Delineation of communications about facts and persons.
  6. More lead time for information flow and decision processes.
  7. Monthly / quarterly written statement by the school / "streamlining" of conferences by the written prior information / feedback of communication problems to school management and teacher teams.
  8. Participation in newsletters / preparation for critical engagement and discourse between colleagues.

All results of the various components will be rendered into an action plan, which operationalizes every specific improvement measure for each participating institution. The implementation is systematically accompanied by qualified in-school benchmarking assessors in order to put the school in a position to use the instruments independently after a period of testing.

Example for action plan:

Field of application, criteria / dimension Objectives General/specific Quality measures Means
Reduction of work load Quality management, avoiding frustration Identification of work load through analysis of task matrix Talking with employee, organizational change, application of reduced hours principle, expanding allocation schemes
Delegation Creating a culture of delegation Inclusion of unit level managers Unit managers sign trainees’ certificates
Management of interfaces between functional units Improvement of working conditions Information flow Joint talkings, including administrative, technical and teaching staff

The task matrix

The task matrix basically follows a tripartite structure:

  • Which tasks have to be carried out by the VET school?
  • Which tasks are already carried out by the teachers?
  • Which tasks are unclear or not fixed yet?

In the task matrix, on the vertical axis all tasks are listed, while on the horizontal axis training schemes are detailed in accordance with the official training classification. The matrix therefore is related to administrative and educational tasks, as well as to the training programme, which reflects the core "product" of the VET school.

The tasks are divided into the following areas of quality:

  • School management
  • Affairs of disciplines and subjects
  • Developing and ensuring quality
    • Input quality
    • Process quality
    • Output quality
  • Ad hoc tasks evolving from the specific nature of training programmes

Task area school management:

Standard tasks, which relate to the overall school organization, such as budgeting, school programming, implementation of training schemes, management, statistics, certification, applications, libraries, PR, information and communication etc.

Task area education and training (disciplines, subjects)

Most relevant for teachers. Major tasks: teacher conferences and didactical development.

Task area quality development and assurance (input quality).

Input qualities refer to factors such as as-qualifications of teachers, school organization, legal and cultural environment of the school, etc.

Task area quality development and assurance (process quality)

Process quality refers to the whole school life: How is the quality of the training programme? How is quality of the school climate? How about cooperation among teachers? How effective are is the work organization and the work process? In general, good quality process will lead to good quality outputs. On the other hand, a school may prescribe a particular teaching culture that leads to a good school climate, which in terms of learning achievements has only limited effects. The definition of quality indicators is therefore complex.

Task area quality development and assurance (output quality)

Only if the results of learning are good and have emerged from an attractive learning environment, a VET school may be described as of high quality. Thus product quality is the most important quality. However this often is neglected in practice, due to insufficient measurement of output quality.

Problems and constraints encountered and solutions found:

Not applicable

Good Practice Category
Quality of WBL