- 2015Approved/Agreed
- 2018Implementation
- 2019Implementation
- 2020Implementation
Background
In accordance with the Legal Notice No 296 of 2012, the National Commission for Further and Higher Education (NCFHE) (name changed in 2021 to Malta Further and Higher Education Authority (MFHEA)) acts as the external verifier for VET providers.
Objectives
To provide guidance to education institutions that adopt internal and external quality assurance (QA) in order to enhance the learning outcomes provided through their educational programmes.
Description
The National quality assurance framework for further and higher education was launched in 2015, covering upper secondary and higher VET (IVET) including work-based learning (WBL), CVET as well as other types of further, higher and adult formal education offered by State and private providers. The framework implements legal provisions on internal quality assurance and periodic external quality audits (every five years) and provides the conceptual context for this work. It is based on the European standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) and the quality cycle and the European quality assurance in vocational education and training (EQAVET) indicators.
- the NCFHE ensures that all further and higher academic and VET institutions have a clear internal quality assurance system in place and self-assess their performance periodically. Accreditation, initial and follow-up external quality audits of providers and programmes by NCFHE are mandatory requirements for licensing;
- guidelines and quality standards at VET provider level are used to promote a culture of continuous improvement. As a result, quality culture in Malta is a combination of internal QA mechanisms and an external QA system adapted to national and stakeholder needs;
- the same principles that apply to IVET on evaluation and review of VET providers are also applicable to CVET;
- the national approach to quality...
The National quality assurance framework for further and higher education was launched in 2015, covering upper secondary and higher VET (IVET) including work-based learning (WBL), CVET as well as other types of further, higher and adult formal education offered by State and private providers. The framework implements legal provisions on internal quality assurance and periodic external quality audits (every five years) and provides the conceptual context for this work. It is based on the European standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) and the quality cycle and the European quality assurance in vocational education and training (EQAVET) indicators.
- the NCFHE ensures that all further and higher academic and VET institutions have a clear internal quality assurance system in place and self-assess their performance periodically. Accreditation, initial and follow-up external quality audits of providers and programmes by NCFHE are mandatory requirements for licensing;
- guidelines and quality standards at VET provider level are used to promote a culture of continuous improvement. As a result, quality culture in Malta is a combination of internal QA mechanisms and an external QA system adapted to national and stakeholder needs;
- the same principles that apply to IVET on evaluation and review of VET providers are also applicable to CVET;
- the national approach to quality assurance in VET includes a system that collects information on IVET graduates. In the official manual for quality assurance at VET provider level, one of the indicators follows up students and their transition to work. Information is collected by VET providers who forward their data to the NCFHE. VET providers use the information to introduce new VET programmes that tackle skills gaps identified by the industry. The NCFHE also collects information through the graduate tracer study, the employee skills survey (which collects evidence about the number of employees in different sectors);
- the Education Act empowers the NCFHE to collect data both from public and private education providers.
The National quality assurance framework for further and higher education was launched in 2015 covering upper secondary and higher VET including work-based learning (WBL), CVET as well as other types of further, higher and adult formal education offered by State and private providers
Also, in 2015, Jobsplus carried out the employability index study (which identifies students that may be at a risk of underemployment due to mismatch between their educational attainment and current occupation).
In 2018, following the adoption of the proposal to establish regular graduate tracking in Europe, the European Commission commissioned the EUROGRADUATE pilot project.
Every year the NCFHE collects the annual student headcount statistics from further and higher education providers in Malta. This data collection provides insights into student enrolments in further and higher education in addition to providing added data on graduates who complete their studies in that year.
The EUROGRADUATE pilot project, seeks to investigate the feasibility of establishing a European graduate tracking survey. The pilot study was conducted in eight countries: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Malta and Norway. The NCFHE is responsible for implementing the study in Malta.
In September 2020 the NCFHE completed the EUROGRADUATE report for Malta.
The NCHFE has been nominated as national expert for the EC funded project for capacity building for a European graduate tracking initiative in higher education (EAC-2020-0312).
The overall objective of this project is to support the European Commission’s effort in designing, coordinating, implementing, monitoring and helping the EU and European Economic Area countries to build their capacities to prepare the ground for a European graduate tracking mechanism in higher education.
This capacity building intends to contribute to achieving the objectives of the Council recommendation on tracking graduates, and will be implemented in close cooperation with the countries concerned. The contract has several key tasks:
- Task 1: Provide a baseline analysis of capacity shortages in individual countries (July-September 2020);
- Task 2: Produce tailor-made strategic roadmaps for meeting capacity requirements in individual countries (September-December 2020);
- Task 3: Implement the roadmaps in beneficiary countries (January-December 2021);
- Task 4: Final assessment of the state of readiness for a European graduate tracking mechanism (January-April 2022).
From January 2021 the NCFHE is participating in the project with its new name (i.e. as Malta’s Further and Higher Education Authority (MFHEA)).
Bodies responsible
- Malta Further and Higher Education Authority (MFHEA)
- National Commission for Further and Higher Education (NCFHE) (until 2021)
Thematic categories
Governance of VET and lifelong learning
This thematic category looks at existing legal frameworks providing for strategic, operational – including quality assurance – and financing arrangements for VET and lifelong learning (LLL). It examines how VET and LLL-related policies are placed in broad national socioeconomic contexts and coordinate with other strategies and policies, such as economic, social and employment, growth and innovation, recovery and resilience.
This thematic category covers partnerships and collaboration networks of VET stakeholders – especially the social partners – to shape and implement VET in a country, including looking at how their roles and responsibilities for VET at national, regional and local levels are shared and distributed, ensuring an appropriate degree of autonomy for VET providers to adapt their offer.
The thematic category also includes efforts to create national, regional and sectoral skills intelligence systems (skills anticipation and graduate tracking) and using skills intelligence for making decisions about VET and LLL on quality, inclusiveness and flexibility.
This thematic sub-category refers to further development of national quality assurance (QA) systems for IVET and CVET, for all learning environments (school-based provision and work-based learning, including apprenticeships) and all learning types (digital, face-to-face or blended), delivered by both public and private providers. These systems are underpinned by the EQAVET quality criteria and by indicative descriptors applied both at system and provider levels, as defined in Annex II of the VET Recommendation. The sub-category concerns creating and improving external and self-evaluation of VET providers, and establishing criteria of QA, accreditation of providers and programmes. It also covers the activities of Quality assurance national reference points for VET on implementing and further developing the EQAVET framework, including the implementation of peer reviews at VET system level.
High-quality and timely skills intelligence is a powerful policy tool, helping improve economic competitiveness and fostering social progress and equality through the provision of targeted skills training to all citizens (Cedefop, 2020). Skills intelligence is the outcome of an expert-driven process of identifying, analysing, synthesising and presenting quantitative and/or qualitative skills and labour market information. Skills intelligence draws on data from multiple sources, such as graduate tracking systems, skills anticipation mechanisms, including at sectoral and regional levels. Actions related to establishing and developing such systems fall under this thematic sub-category.