Under the Going Global Partnership programme in Uzbekistan our TVET project aims to respond to the national economic development ambition and youth employment agendas; the project builds on our previous successful engagement with the Government of Uzbekistan and the Ministry of higher and secondary specialised education around Skills and TVET.
Policy discussions and consultations around priorities in TVET and opportunities to partner with the UK in December 2021-January 2022 lead to the development of the college partnership concept. As a result of the open call in the UK in February 2022 Lincoln college was selected to work with two vocational colleges in Uzbekistan with the major focus being construction and ICT.
After careful consideration and consultations with the Ministry of higher and secondary specialised education in March - April 2022 all college partners agreed to initiate action research and focus on Quality assurance processes at an institutional level.
At the initial stage of the project college directors were engaged in the desk research to review some of the essential QA documentation from the UK to identify examples of good practice; the documents included:
- Self-Assesment Review (SAR) Generation Guidance
- Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (EIF) framework - UK's Government Quality Assurers which provides the basis for the framework of the SAR
- Example UK Head of Department Level SAR
- A Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) template.
This was followed by the action research aiming to take one part of the UK SAR process and use it as an example. This has started at Head of Department or Uzbekistan equivalent, then taking in Director level and then finally at College Leader(s) level to provide a SAR and QIP. This we believe will allow a review of the output as an internal improvement technique and development moving forward.
As a result of this pilot project a detailed Quality Assurance Plan with clear definition of processes relevant to Uzbekistan context will be submitted to the Ministry of higher and secondary specialised education of the Republic of Uzbekistan with recommendations for further dissemination.