The HMIE report Learner Representation in Quality Assurance Arrangements in Scottish Further Education Colleges, written in 2002, contained four recommendations.
1 SFEFC should review the continued use of the standard student questionnaire to generate national data on student perceptions and consider alternative methods of capturing the evidence, including the issue of externally devised and administered questionnaires timed to coincide with the four-yearly reviews of colleges.
SFEFC took a decision to end the requirement for colleges to use a standard student questionnaire as a basis for national data, on the grounds that this approach was inflexible, did not meet colleges’ needs for student feedback, and did not general useful national measures of quality. Instead, SFEFC now expects all colleges to develop and deploy appropriate questionnaires or other feedback mechanisms as part of their internal self-evaluation processes. Colleges’ use of such feedback mechanisms forms part of the evidence base for HMIE college review. In addition, SFEFC and now SFC have commissioned national student satisfaction surveys, and a longitudinal study of 2004 leavers, which provide more helpful data on national trends.
2 Colleges should provide guidance to course committees on the systematic review of student evaluation data and existing good practice in the sector should be disseminated more widely.
During the period since 2002 colleges generally made further progress in using the HMIE framework for review and evaluation by course or programme committees. Across colleges, there were different approaches to programme committee use of the framework, depending on the priority in each college. In 2004, colleges started to adapt their guidance to programme committees to take account of the revised framework that HMIE introduced in May 2004. The revised framework provided a good basis for programme committees to report on student evaluation data, with clear references to the learner’s contribution as well as a greater emphasis on engagement with the learner in quality elements A5 Learning and teaching process and A7 Learner progress and outcomes. The college review quality elements A8 Quality assurance and improvement, B6 Quality assurance and B7 Quality improvement also provided guidance to colleges on areas where students’ contributions were important. Most programme committees gave due attention to student input at programme committee meetings, and a few recorded and acted on student contributions in a systematic way. In general, programme committees and staff also noted and acted where appropriate on specific comments that students made in questionnaires about programmes or units. However, there was not sufficient in-depth analysis of the data from student evaluations at this level, often because the raw data was not available at programme or unit level or because college guidance on the approach to its use was not available.
There had not been effective sharing of good practice across the sector on ways of improving student representation.
3 SFEFC should consider commissioning further investigation and research into learner representation issues in further education to encourage and facilitate greater student involvement in boards of management and college self-evaluation.
SHEFC, SFEFC and, recently, SFC provided funding for SPARQS to help students and institutions to improve the engagement of students in quality processes. Through its training courses for students and staff and its published materials, SPARQS helped to raise awareness of representation issues in colleges, and helped students to engage more effectively in representation issues. SPARQS had enabled learners who had taken part in their training to understand better their role in the college and how they could contribute as student representatives. Colleges generally supported SPARQS in making arrangements to train students to play their part in college quality improvement systems.
4 HMIE and SFEFC should review the reporting of learner representation issues in published review reports.
Following the completion of the previous four-year cycle of reviews in 2004, HMIE worked with SFEFC to re-examine how students should be involved in reviews of Scotland’s colleges. HMIE introduced its revised review model in January 2005. The new model included improvements to the method and extent of engagement with learners so that subject and college review reports would be informed by more systematic and structured discussion with learners. As a result, subject reports written in 2005 put strong emphasis on the key issues of Learning and teaching process and Learner progress and outcomes and were based on much more input from learners than hitherto. The revised review model also provided scope for reviewers to report on learner representation issues under quality elements B1 Educational leadership, direction and management, B6 Quality assurance and B7 Quality improvement. These arrangements helped to provide reviewers with a better insight into students’ views and raised the profile of learners during reviews.