How the State Service of Education Quality of Ukraine is implementing new approaches
Interview with Oleksandr YAKYMENKO, First Deputy Head of the State Service, “From Supervision and Control to Autonomy and Support: How the State Service Implements New Approaches”.
From punishment to assistance
Since the higher education system has already undergone European integration changes due to the 2014 reforms, our focus is now on schools. We are laying down the norms that are aimed at integration into the EU.
And we started by changing the philosophy of evaluation. Previously, the main tool was supervision and control over the activities of educational institutions. This was often tantamount to punishment – inspectors and officials would conduct inspections and write down shortcomings: what was missing, what needed to be changed, where the mistakes were. And then the “search for the guilty” began.
Now we have rebuilt the system so that the autonomy of the institution is at the center. First of all, it is about responsibility. The state has shown its trust by giving educational institutions the opportunity to independently manage material and intellectual resources.
What is our role in this paradigm? We have moved from supervision and control to support and assistance.
In particular, we came to the conclusion that educational institutions should have an internal quality assurance system. We developed recommendations: what it is, what it consists of, what the evaluation criteria are. After all, you can’t pass a law and tell principals and heads of institutions to work according to the new rules. It is important to explain and provide support.
That’s how we created the Alphabet for Directors, a guide for management on how to better set up internal processes, how to evaluate the work of the administration and teachers, and how to build a strategy.
New tools for assessing the quality of education
We have been adapting our tools to the philosophy of autonomy. Thus, institutional audit has become a key tool. This is an external assessment of the school’s work, during which independent experts evaluate educational and management processes and compliance with legal requirements.
The audit is a new procedure for studying the educational activities of a school in Ukraine, which replaced the state certification of schools. During the audit, we focus on four main areas:
- EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT;
- TEACHERS` ACTIVITIES;
- MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES;
- ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR STUDENTS.
We also wanted to move away from the word “inspection,” which was in our name, because it already had a negative meaning, associated with punishment. We switched to using the term quality assurance of education.
Getting away from templates
We are developing recommendations on how to prepare a development strategy for institutions, but this is only a level of recommendations. We encourage the creative approach of institutions, including at the level of developing their own strategies.
However, we have faced the fact that people come to us and ask for templates to fill out. So we try to explain that our value is in difference, and we don’t want to be reduced to typical things. It’s a balancing act to help institutions and leave space for creativity so that they can contribute to the development of the education system.
Today we are in a transition period and are trying to implement a self-assessment approach.
Communication strategy as a way of understanding
We realized that there might be some resistance because we were introducing fundamentally new approaches. As the saying goes, everyone wants change, but not everyone wants to change. That’s why it was important to properly communicate the purpose of our actions. Therefore, we developed a communication strategy, where we spelled out the theses, mission, and arguments for the introduction of new tools in detail and clearly.
We developed a communication strategy for each product. And with it, we went to the heads of the institutions. It was not enough to come and say: “We have an institutional audit – use it”. But to describe in detail how it can be useful, how it will allow us to get closer to the “quality school” model is another matter.
Learn from other people’s mistakes
We did not do everything alone, it would have been the wrong approach. Before implementing changes in our country, we actively studied the experience of other countries in the system of education quality assessment. The Netherlands, Scotland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania: we consulted with experts in these countries and got acquainted with their approach.
Continuous improvement is the key to the quality assurance system. But we also need to take into account that we cannot simply copy someone else’s experience – it is important to adapt it to our realities, including “working on mistakes.” For example, we worked with the evaluation system. The law has a rather large framework of what the education quality system consists of, which includes more than 10 points and an “etc.” clause.
We started studying the experience of other countries in this area and noticed that most countries have gone from 10+ points to 4.
We began to wonder why. And we learned that it was the complexity of administration and bureaucracy. So we immediately “jumped” to 4 points: educational environment; teachers` activities; management activities; assessment system for students. This jump saved us 20 years of our own experience.
Interview with Oleksandr YAKYMENKO, First Deputy Head of the State Service, “From Supervision and Control to Autonomy and Support: How the State Service Implements New Approaches”.
From punishment to assistance
Since the higher education system has already undergone European integration changes due to the 2014 reforms, our focus is now on schools. We are laying down the norms that are aimed at integration into the EU.
And we started by changing the philosophy of evaluation. Previously, the main tool was supervision and control over the activities of educational institutions. This was often tantamount to punishment – inspectors and officials would conduct inspections and write down shortcomings: what was missing, what needed to be changed, where the mistakes were. And then the “search for the guilty” began.
Now we have rebuilt the system so that the autonomy of the institution is at the center. First of all, it is about responsibility. The state has shown its trust by giving educational institutions the opportunity to independently manage material and intellectual resources.
What is our role in this paradigm? We have moved from supervision and control to support and assistance.
In particular, we came to the conclusion that educational institutions should have an internal quality assurance system. We developed recommendations: what it is, what it consists of, what the evaluation criteria are. After all, you can’t pass a law and tell principals and heads of institutions to work according to the new rules. It is important to explain and provide support.
That’s how we created the Alphabet for Directors, a guide for management on how to better set up internal processes, how to evaluate the work of the administration and teachers, and how to build a strategy.
New tools for assessing the quality of education
We have been adapting our tools to the philosophy of autonomy. Thus, institutional audit has become a key tool. This is an external assessment of the school’s work, during which independent experts evaluate educational and management processes and compliance with legal requirements.
The audit is a new procedure for studying the educational activities of a school in Ukraine, which replaced the state certification of schools. During the audit, we focus on four main areas:
- EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT;
- TEACHERS` ACTIVITIES;
- MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES;
- ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR STUDENTS.
We also wanted to move away from the word “inspection,” which was in our name, because it already had a negative meaning, associated with punishment. We switched to using the term quality assurance of education.
Getting away from templates
We are developing recommendations on how to prepare a development strategy for institutions, but this is only a level of recommendations. We encourage the creative approach of institutions, including at the level of developing their own strategies.
However, we have faced the fact that people come to us and ask for templates to fill out. So we try to explain that our value is in difference, and we don’t want to be reduced to typical things. It’s a balancing act to help institutions and leave space for creativity so that they can contribute to the development of the education system.
Today we are in a transition period and are trying to implement a self-assessment approach.
Communication strategy as a way of understanding
We realized that there might be some resistance because we were introducing fundamentally new approaches. As the saying goes, everyone wants change, but not everyone wants to change. That’s why it was important to properly communicate the purpose of our actions. Therefore, we developed a communication strategy, where we spelled out the theses, mission, and arguments for the introduction of new tools in detail and clearly.
We developed a communication strategy for each product. And with it, we went to the heads of the institutions. It was not enough to come and say: “We have an institutional audit – use it”. But to describe in detail how it can be useful, how it will allow us to get closer to the “quality school” model is another matter.
Learn from other people’s mistakes
We did not do everything alone, it would have been the wrong approach. Before implementing changes in our country, we actively studied the experience of other countries in the system of education quality assessment. The Netherlands, Scotland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania: we consulted with experts in these countries and got acquainted with their approach.
Continuous improvement is the key to the quality assurance system. But we also need to take into account that we cannot simply copy someone else’s experience – it is important to adapt it to our realities, including “working on mistakes.” For example, we worked with the evaluation system. The law has a rather large framework of what the education quality system consists of, which includes more than 10 points and an “etc.” clause.
We started studying the experience of other countries in this area and noticed that most countries have gone from 10+ points to 4.
We began to wonder why. And we learned that it was the complexity of administration and bureaucracy. So we immediately “jumped” to 4 points: educational environment; teachers` activities; management activities; assessment system for students. This jump saved us 20 years of our own experience.