EQAVET Peer review Austria – Presentation of the Quality Assurance Me...

For Austrian VET schools, the Education Reform Act of 2017 led to a new school governance and it was necessary to build an adapted quality management system. At the same time, it was an opportunity to improve the quality management of schools and to benefit from the experience of the previous quality management systems Quality Management Systems QIBB (Quality Initiative in Vocational Education) and SQA (School Quality in General Education). As of 2021, QMS, the Austrian quality management system for schools, was introduced. introduced. It is a reform that affects all 5927 Austrian schools, 696 of which are vocational schools. For Austrian schools, the new governance means a big change. QMS as the new school-wide quality management system is intended to support schools in managing this change and to be a useful tool for school management, teaching teams and individual teachers.

The new Austrian quality management system for schools (QMS), its design, implementation and transition from the previous QM system for vocational schools (QIBB) to the QMS is currently undergoing a peer review. The EQAVET peer review is a chance to get the opinion of external experts on the whole change process, especially on the design and implementation process of the QMS.

The Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), which is responsible for the design and implementation of the QMS, thereby expects European experts working in the field of quality assurance in education/vocational training to obtain an external opinion at an early stage. Feedback on the design, implementation and transition process from the old quality management system QIBB to the QMS is very welcome at this stage. The presentation would introduce the cornerstones of the vocational education system in Austria and the structural news of quality management at all levels of the school-based vocational education system.