1. Why quality matters A framework for thinking about quality in career guidance
Professor Tristram Hooley
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
Presentation in Oslo 06/03/2018

2. Implementation A vision of practice Theory Actual practice Evidence
Policy
Actual practice
Implementation
Quality
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3. What can be quality assured? “Domains of quality”
Policy
Organisations
Process
People
Output or outcome
Consumption

4. What is quality?

5. Different approaches to quality
“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for.” Peter Drucker
The International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) quality standard focuses on the process and the organisation that runs the process.
Six Sigma focus on the output and the minimisation of errors.

6. Advisory Regulatory Organic Competitive Change driver Local Systemic
Change driver
Local
Systemic
Degree of provider professional autonomy
Low
Advisory
Regulatory
High
Organic
Competitive

7. Regulatory (typical features)
Legal requirements and formal standards
Inspection regimes
Practitioner registration (incorporating qualification requirements)
Regulations about facilities
Regulations around outputs (for example, a requirement that a school or career guidance facility must provide a certain number of individual counselling sessions per year).

8. Advisory (typical features)
Models, benchmarks and exemplars of good practice
Provision of support for providers and professionals
Driven by moral rather than legal pressure

9. Organic (typical features)
Quality is defined by the provider and the professional.
Driven by professional values and the desire to do a good job.
Mechanisms include quality circles, supervisory arrangements, peer observation and mentoring, professional networks and local self-evaluation.
Involvement of users as co-producers.

10. Competitive (typical features)
Quality driven by customer responses to information on outcomes
Consumer feedback
League tables
Outcome focused
Payment by results

11. Critical perspectives on quality
If quality is defined at least in part as fitness for purpose, then it must be asked, ‘Whose purpose or purposes?’
Limited evidence base of on efficacy
Distortion and perverse incentives
Is it possible to quality assure something with the complexity of career guidance

12. The example of England

13. The Careers Strategy

14. Good career guidance
Summarises existing evidence and frames them as eight benchmarks.
Presents it in a way that can be understood by policy makers and acted on by school leaders.
Has achieved wide support amongst policy actors and practitioners alike.
The influential 2014 report

15. The Gatsby Benchmarks 1. A stable careers programme
2. Learning from career and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each pupil
4. Linking curriculum learning and careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experiences of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance

16. COMPASS (www.compass-careers.org.uk)

17. The quality approach in English schools
Statutory guidance
Gatsby Benchmarks
Supported by Compass
Destinations data
Quality in Careers Standard
CDI curriculum
Professional standards & register of practice
Careers leadership
Local co-ordination
Regulatory
Advisory
Competitive
Regulatory
Advisory
Advisory
Regulatory
Organic
Outcome
Organisations
Process
People
Organisations
Process
People
Process

18. References
Department for Education. (2017). Careers Strategy: Making the Most of Everyone’s Skills and Talents. London: Department for Education.
Drucker, P. (2015). Innovation and entrepreneurship. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Gatsby Charitable Foundation. (2014). Good Career Guidance. London: Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Hooley, T. and Rice, S. (Forthcoming). Ensuring quality in career guidance: A critical review. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling.
The Careers & Enterprise Company. (2017). State of the Nation London: The Careers & Enterprise Company.

19. In conclusion
Quality is a contestable concept. It can mean different things to different people.
Quality is complex. It can operate at many levels and in many different ways.
There are also a number of dangers to watch out when you implement quality assurance approaches.
The best solutions might require the interweaving of different approaches to quality (although there is also some value in simplicity).

20. Tristram Hooley
Director of Research, The Careers & Enterprise Company /Professor of Career Education, University of Derby / Professor II, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
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