- Consultation
- Documents Published by the Inspectorate
- Inspection
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- Survey Theme Reports
- Colleges and Training Organisations
Providing Inspection Services for Department of Education, Department of Culture, Arts & Leisure and Department for Employment & Learning.
Draft Quality Indicators for the Youth Sector September 2007
The work of the Education and Training and Inspectorate is about ‘promoting improvement in the interests of all learners’.
Inspection in the youth sector sets out to answer the question, ‘How effectively and efficiently does the organisation or management group, provide a high quality youth service that meets the needs of young people?’ That is also a question which all practitioners and managers must ask of themselves.
To help inspectors make their evaluations and to help practitioners reflect on their practice, with a view to identifying strengths and identifying and addressing areas for improvement, we have consulted with a focus group and developed a draft set of quality indicators which can be used at all levels in an organisation and across regional management structures
We hope that by piloting them in our work over the next year, and by inviting a response from the sector, we can arrive at a shared view of what constitutes quality and what are good standards in youth work. The draft indicators are built around the five key questions that are common to all our work; they are aligned with the Department of Education’s [DE] youth work strategy and also with the curriculum document, ‘Model for Effective Practice.’We have also shared the draft indicators with DE.
We invite practitioners, organisations and management groups to use the indicators as a tool in their own self-evaluation and improvement planning and to offer any feedback on how effective and helpful you find them to be. The indicators are deliberately set out as questions which are designed to be answered after consideration and evaluation of various aspects of provision; they are not statements with which an organisation has to comply.
The indicators fall into three sections and ask five main questions
Achievement and Standards
How well do participants (young people) achieve?
Quality of Provision for Learning, and
How effective are youth work practice, training and assessment?
How well do the learning experiences, programmes and activities meet the needs of the learners and the wider community?
How well are the learners cared for guided and supported?
Leadership and Management.
How effective are leadership and management in raising achievement and supporting learners?
It is hoped that, by the end of the year, as a result of our having piloted the indicators and received feedback on them, we will be able to publish a final document, ‘Improving Quality: Raising Standards in the Youth Sector’, which will include char
acteristics of good practice and sources of evidence that demonstrate those characteristics. We also hope in the course of the year, to offer some help in looking with you at the indicators and how you might use them.
We would welcome your feedback; please send your comments to inspectionservices@deni.gov.uk (and mark it Youth Quality Indicators). Yu should also feel free to discuss the indicators with your District Inspector, John McCavana or Rita Burke or with Walker Ewart, Managing Inspector, for Youth, Diversity and Culture or with me.
Maureen Bennett (Assistant Chief Inspector, Children and Young People’s Division)
September 2007
