PEER REVIEW OF THE QUALITY ASSURANCE OF THE SLOVENIAN SECONDARY VOCATIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM – within the framework of the EQAVET NRP SLO 2021 – 2023 project
In November 2020, the Council of the European Union published in the Official Journal of the European Union a Council Recommendation on Vocational Education and Training (VET) for sustainable competitiveness, social justice and resilience, calling on EQAVET to develop a specific methodology for reciprocal peer reviews between Member States. The purpose of said peer reviews is to support the improvement and transparency of arrangements in relation to the quality assurance of Member States’ vocational education and training systems.
DG EMPL (Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion – the department of the European Commission responsible for EU policy on employment, social affairs, competencies, labour mobility and related EU funding programmes) and the EQAVET Secretariat agreed in 2021 on a joint peer review methodology and presented it in a manual.
The National Quality Assurance Reference Points (EQAVET NRPs) of 21 Member States, including Slovenia, agreed to cooperate in the first stage of peer reviews.
The topic of the peer review in Slovenia was the National System of Support for VET Schools in their Internal Quality Assurance. The peer review was carried out by representatives of EQAVET NRPs from Austria, Greece, Croatia, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, under the mentorship of a European expert. The peer review was coordinated by the EQAVET NRP in Slovenia and the EQAVET Secretariat.
The peer review is carried out in accordance with the joint methodology in several successive stages. In the preparatory stage, Slovenia prepared a self-evaluation report, on the basis of which, in cooperation with the EQAVET Secretariat, we scheduled the peer review visit, which took place on 1 and 2 June 2023 in KULT 316 at the BIC Ljubljana. In addition to the EQAVET NRP, representatives of four Slovenian secondary vocational and professional schools/school centres, representatives of the Quality and Analysis Sector of the Education Development and Quality Office from the Slovenian Ministry of Education and a representative of the National Examinations Centre participated in the peer review visit. Like any other country, the EQAVET Secretariat also provided us with the expert support of an objective national expert who, at the time of the preparation and the expert review itself, cooperated with the EQAVET NRP.
At the end of the visit, we received the first feedback from the team of evaluators, in which foreign experts emphasised the importance of an externally-associated critical entity and external evaluation, while the final evaluation report will be available within one month. Evaluation findings will be an important source of planning and implementation of improvements to the national system of support to secondary vocational and professional schools in their internal quality assurance and development.
The questions from the evaluators encouraged us to think more deeply and led to interesting expert debates. The peer review has enabled us to reflect on our own practice and further improvements in the face of current and future challenges in the field of VET quality assurance. At the meeting, we took a major step towards strengthening professional cooperation at national level, and mutual trust was established between all participating countries, which encouraged us to continue cooperation and integration within the framework of the EQAVET project.
We agreed that the peer review visit was very successful and that it will contribute to the further development and promotion of a culture of systematic identification, assurance and development of the quality of VET.