The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture has prepared a proposal for a quality strategy in vocational education and training until 2030.

The Vocational Education and Training Act (531/2017), which entered into force in 2018, requires education providers to have an efficient quality management system in place and carry out quality management at all levels. There are five strategic goals to help the vision for VET and the vision for its quality management to be implemented:

  • implementing comprehensive quality management in VET institutions;
  • taking customer-orientation as the basis for activities;
  • integrating continuous improvement towards excellence in all activities and decision-making;
  • adopting evidence-based leadership and guidance; and
  • setting clear targets for the quality and effectiveness of activities.

Together these strategic goals will provide comprehensive long-term guidance for quality management in VET. They will be supported by practical measures over the next three years (2020-22) for the following VET actors: VET providers, Ministry of Education and Culture, Finnish National Agency for Education, working life committees and Finnish Education Evaluation Centre. Monitoring and review of the quality management strategy will take place at the end of the three-year cycle, after which the strategic goals and measures will be revised as necessary.

The draft quality strategy includes national guidance, quality management of education providers and external evaluation of education. Quality management is based on standards and voluntary implementation. The main focus of the quality strategy is continuous learning, development of work-based learning, the intersection between work and education, as well as learning in various learning environments.

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