Improving Quality Assurance in European Vocational Education and Training

Many resources are invested in the development and introduction of Quality Assurance Systems in educational institutions all over the world. Our assumption is that, as a result of quality assurance activities, practitioners obtain information about their own functioning and institutional performance which is new and valuable to them and which therefore will form a basis for them to improve performance. This assumption proves to be naive; too often performance feedback is under-utilized, and evaluations become void, legitimizing rites instead of a basis for organizational learning and the improvement of institutions.