During the first quarter of 2020 Dr Elly Govers continued with her work as Provider Quality Assurance Advisor to help registered providers monitor their own quality.
Dr Elly and Wade Evans, who was contracted by VQA as Quality Coach, visited Lume Memorial Training Centre in January to assist them with finalising their self-review. Their self-review report has now been submitted to VQA.
During February and March, Dr Elly worked with three providers (Vanuatu Institute of Teacher Education, Edwards Institute of Technology and Londua Technical College) to help them conduct their self-reviews. The support consisted of information sessions and workshops where the staff of these organisations discussed the quality of their education services and how these should be improved. The discussions are animated, demonstrating the engagement of all the staff in wanting to improve what they do.
One of the issues that has been identified during the self-reviews so far is that many providers do not have an up-to-date quality management system (QMS) and that they are finding it difficult to update the QMS all by themselves. For this reason Dr Elly is now facilitating a support programme for providers. The first activity was a three-day workshop for six providers in Santo on 9-11 March, to get them started with updating their QMS. The participating providers were ACOM Vocational Education and Technical School (ACOMVETS), St Michel Technical College, Vanuatu Agriculture College (VAC), Talua Theological Training Institute, Matahi Rural Training Centre, and Londua Technical College. Unfortunately no other activities have been held yet, due to Dr Elly’s repatriation to New Zealand. However, Dr Elly is available during the next two months to provide e-mail support (egovers@vanuatu.gov.vu), and providers are encouraged to make use of this service, as it is unclear at this stage if the support will continue after 1 June.
On 12-13 March Dr Elly also facilitated a workshop for four providers in Santo (ACOMVETS, VAC, Talua and St Michel) to develop procedures for on-going monitoring of the quality of the courses they deliver. Arthur Edgell, who has been contracted by VQA as Quality Coach, assisted Dr Elly in this work.
The participants in the workshops did a lot of work during these days and said that they went away with a much better understanding of policies, procedures and monitoring quality, and how the whole system of quality assurance works.