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In her April 2010 NILOA paper, "Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement in Assessment," Pat Hutchings called for institutions to involve students in assessment, citing the potential to increase faculty engagement. In Curtis and Anderson (2020), the first author interviewed numerous partnership experts in both the United Kingdom and the United States regarding student-faculty partnerships and the extent to which students currently engage in the assessment process. Findings from the study make it clear that there currently exists little student-faculty partnership in assessment at the program- or system-levels. Combining existing research on partnership and the expert responses from the Curtis et al. study, we present a framework, based on prototyping, for developing student-faculty partnerships in program-level student learning outcomes assessment.

This research paper is one in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of how CVET is conceptualised in various international level policy documents and how it is referred to across countries. It discusses national conceptions of CVET, the providers, participation by IVET graduates in non-formal education and training (NFE), and participation of adults in VET education institutions in European Union Member States, Iceland and Norway. The paper describes how the provision of CVET by different types of provider has changed over the past two decades, discussing the main drivers of this change and speculating about possible future trends. One of the main findings is that there are many dominant conceptions of CVET across Europe and the use of this term is not consistent, sometimes not even within countries. [The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH, led by Dr Jorg Markowitch; the consortium includes the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

This research paper is the fifth in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). Based on comparative analysis of labour force survey data from 2014, the report analyses the vocational effect on labour market and education outcomes, asking whether any advantages conferred by vocational qualifications in early career would be offset by disadvantages later in life. The report explores the functioning of the safety net and the diversion effects across countries, demonstrating how these vary considerably with the specific institutional structure of schooling and work-based training. The results indicate that VET graduates are potentially sacrificing the longer-term gains associated with further education in favour of short-term benefits. [This research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH and including the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

The United Kingdom (UK) has dramatically increased the supply of graduates over the last four decades. The university system has successfully produced a huge increase in mass higher education over the last 40 years to meet an increased demand for skilled workers. It is one of the UK's most successful export industries in terms of attracting foreign students and is second only to the US in terms of scientific prestige. The coalition government's efforts to transfer the financial burden of higher education away from the taxpayer and towards graduates, and create a more efficient, competitive sector, have not yet materialised. In fact, the current system has almost no price variation and is almost as expensive as the one it replaced. This report discusses the costs and growth of higher education in the UK.

In this paper, we survey the UK-based literature on school structures and school autonomy to identify settings in which alternative and more autonomous school arrangements can improve the educational attainments of pupils in the bottom tail of the achievement distribution. We also present new evidence on the effect of school academies on the age-16 GCSE attainment of students of different abilities up to 2009, before the Coalition Government changed the nature of the Labour academy programme. Within the UK education system, academies enjoy substantial autonomy in terms of management of their staff, taught curriculum, length of the school day and other aspects of their day-to-day functioning. Our results show that schools that converted to academies between 2002 and 2007 improved their overall age-16 GCSEs results by further raising the attainments of students in the top half of the ability distribution, and in particular pupils in the top 20% tail. Conversely, we find little evidence that academies helped pupils in the bottom 10% and 20% of the ability distribution. Finally, we find little evidence that late converters (2008 and 2009) had any beneficial effects on pupils of any ability. We conclude our research by comparing the experience of UK academies to that of US charter schools and Swedish free schools, and by providing some insights into the reasons why UK academies did not serve "the tail" as is the case for some US charter schools. An appendix presents Table 1: Academies and GCSE Performance--Teh Effect of Academy Conversion on Pupils of Different Abilities.

A strong VET system is increasingly seen as essential to overcoming the current economic crisis in Europe. VET is seen as a powerful tool to assist in balancing labour market inefficiencies, increasing youth employment possibilities, and reducing skills mismatch. Its inherent flexibility and closeness to the labour market place VET in a good position to contribute to a faster economic recovery and long-term sustainable development. However, crucial for this role is continuous and systematic VET renewal that assures its relevance for the labour market. This publication explores 15 European national approaches to feedback mechanisms between VET and the labour market. It illustrates the diversity of solutions currently applied across Europe and how they are embedded in national traditions and education philosophy. The study asks three fundamental questions: how inclusive are national mechanisms for feedback between the VET system and the labour market; how responsive are existing mechanisms; and how transparent? Three annexes provide: (1) Case Studies; (2) List of interviewees; and (3) List of experts responsible for the country overviews. Bibliography and references are included. [This paper is the result of a team effort reflecting the work of a research consortium led by Jörg Markowitsch from 3s Research Laboratory who together with Tanja Bacher, Carol Costley, David Etherington, Gerhard Geiger, Günter Hefler, Jelena Helemäe, Triin Roosalu, Ellu Saar, Auni Tamm, and Odd Bjørn Ure conducted the research and fieldwork and drafted the report. This work was carried out under Cedefop's service contract No 2011-0161/AO/ECVL/JB-IPS/Cooperation Labour market--VET/007/11.]

The four "home countries" of the United Kingdom are becoming increasingly different with regard to education policy. Nevertheless, they are still highly comparable as compared to education systems elsewhere. Over time, they have had a similar legislative framework (particularly in England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and, in a broader sense, there is a similar social context across the four countries. For example, there is a comparable level of inequality across many education indicators, with similar trends emerging in recent times. In-depth analysis by the National Equality Panel (2010) attributed this to the fact that policies most important for influencing distributional outcomes (such as tax and benefits) are UK-wide. In this paper, the authors take the opportunity to appraise differences and similarities in educational policies and outcomes in the four UK nations. The fact that England has pursued very different policies in the recent past than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland provides a good testing ground to undertake such a comparative review of what has and has not worked so well in terms of the education reforms that have taken place. The content of the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, the authors discuss some key areas of education policy in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Sections 3 and 4, they compare the countries in terms of educational performance and inequality. In Section 5, the authors then discuss evaluation evidence as it relates to key educational issues and the differences and similarities in educational outcomes across the different UK nations. Section 6 offers some concluding remarks. Data Appendix is included. (Contains 8 tables, 1 figure and 6 footnotes.)

Education is an area that is highly devolved in the UK, and the fact that all four constituent countries have pursued very different policies in the recent past provides a good testing ground to undertake a comparative review of the merits or otherwise of the education reforms that have taken place. There is, of course, an important policy context to such an analysis. Examining the performance of children educated in the devolved Scottish system in comparison to those educated in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has potential to offer a unique and valuable insight into the impact of Scottish devolution in a high profile area of public policy. When deciding whether or not to seek independence from the UK, the Scottish electorate will need to consider how a devolved Scotland has fared in educating its nation under its own terms--and hence how they might fare when taking ownership of other policy areas. In examining the key differences in attainment bearing in mind these differences, this report will help answer this question.

This paper is based on a series of workshops about innovation in teaching and learning in vocational education and training (VET) which the authors conducted in March 2009. This paper addresses some of the underlying questions that practitioners have about innovation. The paper is structured in four sections: (1) a comparison of the trends in innovation identified in the two research papers: Australia in one; the United Kingdom and Europe in the other; (2) the workshop task that practitioners undertook: to design and take an innovation to market; (3) the questions and hopes of workshop participants: hidden dimensions of "innovation" and of being "innovative"; and (4) thoughts on expanding the pool of innovative VET practitioners. (Contains 7 footnotes and 1 table.)

Digital learning makes possible the "unbundling" of school provisions--that is, it allows children to be served by providers from almost anywhere, in new and more customized ways. At the same time, because it destandardizes and decentralizes educational delivery, digital education is far harder to bring under the yoke of the quality-control systems and metrics that have been devised for traditional school structures. In this paper, Hess explores the pros and cons of input regulation, outcome-based accountability, and market signals as solutions to the quality challenge. In the end, he recommends using all three approaches in careful combination so as to leverage their strengths and offset their weaknesses. In practice, that means demanding transparent financial information from providers, holding them to account for student achievement gains whenever possible, and developing "crowd-sourcing" reporting systems to help educators, parents, and students identify the most effective purveyors of online learning. (Contains 14 footnotes.)

A White Paper issued by the Labour government--under Prime Minister Tony Blair--in January 2003 outlines potentially sweeping changes in how British universities might be funded and regulated. These changes would build on three major paradigm shifts and experiments in system building in higher education in the United Kingdom since World War II: the creation and subsequent collapse of a binary system of higher education that included both universities and polytechnics; a decrease in governmental funding and an increase in regulations; and the introduction of student fees into the previously exclusively government-funded higher education sector. The Labour government's new White Paper proposes both to increase funding and to diversify the sources, and more controversially, to allow universities to set their own fees. At the same time, it continues to rely on an accountability and regulatory bureaucracy, and incentive funding, to encourage enrollment growth and to expand access to underserved populations.

This document contains four reports on technology and further education (FE) that Lynton Gray and Ann-Marie Warrender prepared for the Further Education Funding Council's Learning and Technology Committee. The first report, "Main Themes from Learning & Technology Committee Press Surveys," examines three themes that were identified during a review of British press coverage of the role of information/learning technologies in FE: technological developments, organizational changes and learning applications. "Learning and Technology in American Community Colleges," which is based on materials presented at an American Association of Community Colleges convention, discusses the following topics: technology and teaching, distance learning, technologies and the Internet, and industry and student-centered learning. "Multimedia and Education," which is based on materials presented at an Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education conference, examines the following topics: technology for teachers, breaching the technological barriers, the impact of national initiatives, publishing and multimedia, and Canada's Open Learning Agency. "Learning Technologies in Industrial Training" explains the uses of information and learning technologies by a small sample of British companies in their own training programs. The implications of the four papers for reform of FE are summarized in a final section titled "Evidence for Action." (MN)

The report summarizes a British research project, part of a larger initiative on educational quality, concerning the extent of secondary students' knowledge about the nature of language, native and foreign, alongside development of practical language skills. The main study was an empirical investigation of the teaching of English and foreign languages at year 9 in three schools. It documented teachers' beliefs and practices with regard to knowledge about language (KAL) and the current state of year 9 pupils' knowledge in five areas (language as a system, language learning/development, language variation by use and by user, language change). The pupils' use of KAL in language performance and the relationship between their developing understanding of language and language learning were also studied. Results of another study were also re-analyzed for data concerning these issues at year 7. Overall, the project revealed substantial levels of KAL-related activity in English and foreign languages within the schools, and some suggestions of its positive contribution to learning, especially in writing. It is concluded, however, that given the fragmented and episodic nature of mush KAL work, its full potential contribution to pupils' development as language users is not being realized. Suggestions for improvement are made. (MSE)

A project was conducted to identify good practice in continuing vocational education (CVE) and the barriers to increasing the quantity and quality of CVE provided by universities in the United Kingdom. During the project, 6 research briefing seminars were attended by 46 persons, 13 researchers conducted case studies, 17 researchers conducted key issue investigations, and 21 universities participated in visits/seminars conducted by the project manager. The study found that all UK universities are committed to providing more CVE, tending toward more integration with degree teaching and research. Good practices identified for senior management include the following: staff motivation, effective financial systems, financial incentives, accreditation of CVE, and recognition for teaching. For CVE directors, these good practices were recommended: departmental coordination and information sharing, good links with central administration, coordinated external networking, and change management. Good practices for department heads were as follows: making CVE a normal academic duty and being selective about collaborators. (Eight appendixes provide the following: an extended project description; a project outline and methodology; lists of steering committee members, case studies, key issues, a list of related projects, and statistical data on CVE in 1990-91 and 1991-92.) (MN)

Educational strategies for social inclusion are based on particular definitions that do not always take account of the complexities of exclusion and inclusion. By attempting to "normalize" the unemployed and disaffected, social inclusion efforts often legitimate the status quo of systems that might otherwise be regarded as contributing to social exclusion. Among the issues that are often ignored in attempts to address social exclusion through education and training are structural unemployment, age, social values, institutional provision, and the notion of what counts as worthwhile learning. These issues were addressed successfully in an action research project in the north of England. The project, which was a partnership between a university and local community organizations, catered to various adults, including men in prison, young mothers, disaffected youth, unwaged people with disabilities, and young Pakistani Muslim women. The courses were validated through the university via an accredited skills framework. According to the information gathered during 50 interviews and 12 focus groups conducted throughout the project, the project's success in helping participants achieve social inclusion can be attributed to the positive student-teacher and student-student relationships cultivated through an educational strategy based on the principle of teaching engaged pedagogy. (Contains 49 references.) (MN)

The aim of this paper is to look at the impact of recent reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and Advanced Subsidiary (AS) curriculum in the UK, which included the teaching of literature in the language classroom in an attempt to make the study of languages more attractive and to better prepare students for university. The delivery of the new GCSEs and A-Levels has served to highlight new challenges, which are hampering the intended purpose of the reforms: language GCSEs and A-Levels are perceived as more difficult than other subjects and severe grading has been confirmed. Moreover, most teachers do not view the compulsory literature element positively. Conversely, academic studies confirm the value of literature in the study of languages and various initiatives demonstrate the attractiveness and effectiveness of literature in terms of increasing motivation and enhancing language skills. In this paper, we suggest some final proposals to improve this situation. [For the complete volume, "Literature in Language Learning: New Approaches," see ED608008.]