D’après le « jaune budgétaire » Formation professionnelle 2013 (publié en octobre 2012) annexant le projet de loi de finances, le chiffre d’affaires réalisé par les organismes dispensateurs de formation professionnelle continue en 2010, qu’il s’agisse de leur activité principale ou d’une activité secondaire, a progressé à un rythme soutenu (+9,9%). 55 301 organismes ont dégagé un chiffre d’affaires de 13 milliards d’euros en formant 22,6 millions de stagiaires (+4,7%) et dispensant au total 1 211 millions d’heures (+0,2%). Au total, en 2010, 601 000 personnes sans emploi sont entrées en formation.
Ceux dont l’activité principale est l’enseignement ou la formation soit 16 731 prestataires de formation continue ont réalisé un chiffre d’affaires de 7,9 milliards d’euros. Leur nombre s’est accru de 8,3 % et leur chiffre d’affaires a progressé de 10,3%.
Les demandeurs d’emplois …
Dans le contexte économique actuel, le Président de la République a demandé au gouvernement de réformer d’ici la fin de l’année 2013 le secteur de la formation professionnelle avec pour objectif de réorienter les fonds vers la formation des demandeurs d’emplois.
Un marché ouvert …
A ce jour, le marché de la formation professionnelle est ouvert et non « protégé ». Ce qui veut dire qu’aucun contrôle qualitatif n’est mené par les pouvoirs publics … le marché se chargeant de permettre aux organismes efficients de subsister et aux autres de disparaitre …
Comme un serpent de mer, l’idée de mettre des conditions à l’exercice de ce métier revient de manière récurrente et certains acteurs comme les OCPA, les Régions … mettent en place de manière désordonnée des conditions aux organismes de formations pour le financement des actions. Source: jaune budgétaire Formation professionnelle 2013. Suite de l'article...

The 8th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) will take place at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, from 21 to 23 November 2013.
Through a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, the 2013 EQAF, entitled “Working together to take quality forward”, will combine practice-oriented or research-based discussions that will take place in the paper sessions and workshops with presentations of current developments in quality assurance. This year the Forum will specifically explore how both individuals and organisations can better understand the role that quality assurance can play in their daily lives, get engaged and work together to take quality forward.
The Forum organisers, ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE, have published a call for contributions from QA practitioners in higher education institutions and quality assurance agencies, students, institutional leaders and researchers in the field. Two types of contributions are sought: papers and workshops.
The deadline to submit contributions is 2 August 2013.
The call for contributions and proposal submission forms are available here.

On 2 and 3 May in Quito, Ecuador, EUA joined representatives of rectors’ conferences and QA agencies from Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador at a focus group aimed at assessing the outcomes of a pilot project for joint programme evaluation in the region. The initiative, launched by CONSUAN (the Andean regional rectors’ council) and supported by ALFA PUENTES, an EUA-coordinated European Commission co-funded project, aimed at stimulating dialogue on quality assurance approaches in the region and providing a platform for agencies and associations to work together around the issues of degree recognition and higher education quality enhancement.
Modelled after an existing joint programme accreditation process in the Mercosur region (Arcu-Sur), the pilot project focuses on two disciplines – agronomy and medicine – and evaluated courses in these respective disciplines at six universities in the region (two each in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia). A pool of peer “evaluators” was nominated by the QA agencies of the four participating countries and joint evaluation guidelines were drafted and agreed. The focus group in Quito was hosted by the Ecuadorian quality assurance agency (CEAACES), which has expanded rapidly in the past two years to meet the Ecuadorian governments’ requirements that all institutions and programmes should be accredited.
One guiding force in the pilot project has been the support from relevant European partners and experts, such as EUA, which has been one of the critical stakeholders in the Bologna Process quality assurance developments. The EUA quality management unit has followed the Andean pilot in an advisory fashion, as has CRUE – the Spanish rectors’ conference (and ALFA PUENTES partner), as well as ANECA, the Spanish quality assurance agency which also participated in the focus group and shared their experiences with a similar European joint-programme evaluation pilot that had been undertaken recently.
In addition, experts from Mercosur and Central America have participated in various meetings of the Andean pilot project, to share their own regional experience: Central America has a joint Accreditation Council (CCA) which essentially certifies and ultimately supports national QA agencies in the region, and Mercosur has an ongoing joint-programme accreditation process supported and funded by governments of the region, under “Mercosur Educativo”. Learning has indeed been mutual, which is one of the goals of the ALFA PUENTES project: while European and other South American experts have provided insight on QA collaboration to the Andean Community, important lessons and insights have also been brought back to Europe from other LA regions.
The Andean Community partners will continue to discuss the pilot project outcomes with political authorities of the region and decide whether the programme should be scaled up. An immediate consequence has also been the formalisation of a QA Agency network in the region.
For more information on ALFA PUENTES: http://alfapuentes.org/portal.

Stephen Downes, (born April 6, 1959) is a designer and commentator in the fields of online learning and new media. Downes has explored and promoted the educational use of computer and online technologies since 1995.[1]
The following post is an extract of a larger piece which Stephen wrote for this blog project. Please download here the full text: Downes: Quality of MOOCS
The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses
In this short contribution I would like to address the question of assessing the quality of massive open online courses. The assessment of the quality of anything is fraught with difficulties, depending as it does on some commonly understood account of what would count as a good example of the thing, what factors constitute success, and how that success against that standard is to be measured. With massive open online courses, it is doubly more difficult, because of the lack of a common definition of the MOOC itself, and because of the implication of external factors in the actual perception and performance of the MOOC. Moreover, it is to my mind far from clear that there is agreement regarding the purpose of a MOOC to begin with, and without such agreement discussions of quality are moot.
The primary criticism of what I will address in this chapter is that success is process-defined rather than outcomes-defined.[1] Without outcomes measurement we cannot measure success, we can’t focus our efforts toward that success, we can’t become more competitive and efficient, we can’t plan for change and improvement, and we can’t define what you want to accomplish as a result. All this is true, and yet there is no measure of outcome or success that can be derived from designer and user motivations, or even from the uses to which MOOCs are put. The only alternative is to identify what a successful MOOC ought to produce as output, without reference to existing (and frankly, very preliminary and very variable) usage. Read more...

Two Agencies admitted to Register at Committee meeting in Berlin
At its meeting in Berlin on 2/3 May 2013, the Register Committee renewed the registration of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain (ANECA) and admitted the European Council on Chiropractic Education (ECCE) to the Register. Based on external reviews of the two agencies the Register Committee concluded that they operate in substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG).
Having satisfied the requirements of the EQAR Merger Policy, the Flemish Council of Universities and University Colleges' Quality Assurance Unit (VLUHR QAU), established as a result of a merger between the two quality assurance agencies VLIR and VLHORA (both admitted to the Register in 2009), was granted provisional registration. During the two-year period VLUHR QAU will have to undergo an external review against the ESG.
Register of quality assurance agencies
AAC-DEVA - Andalusian Agency of Knowledge, Department of Evaluation and Accreditation, Spain.
ACQUIN - Accreditation, Certification and Quality Assurance Institute, Germany.
ACSUCYL - Quality Assurance Agency for the University System of Castilla y León, Spain.
ACSUG - Agency for Quality Assurance in the Galician University System, Spain.
AEQES - Agence pour l'Evaluation de la Qualité de l'Enseignement Supérieur, Belgium.
AERES - Evaluation Agency for Research and Higher Education, France.
AHPGS – Accreditation Agency in Health and Social Sciences, Germany.
ANECA - National Agency for the Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain, Spain.
AQAS - Agency for Quality Assurance through Accreditation of Study Programmes, Germany.
AQU - Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency, Spain.
ARACIS – Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, Romania.
ASHE - Agency for Science and Higher Education, Croatia.
ASIIN e.V., Germany.
CTI - Engineering Degree Commission, France.
ECCE - European Council on Chiropractic Education, Germany.
EVA - Danish Evaluation Institute, Denmark.
evalag - Evaluation Agency Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
FIBAA - Foundation for International Business Administration Accreditation, Germany.
FINHEEC - Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council, Finland.
IEP - Institutional Evaluation Programme, Switzerland.
NEAA - National Evalution and Accreditation Agency, Bulgaria.
NVAO - Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders, Netherlands.
OAQ - Swiss Center of Accreditation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education, Switzerland.
PKA - Polish Accreditation Committee, Poland.
QANU - Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities, Netherlands.
SKVC - Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education, Lithuania.
The Accreditation Institution, Denmark.
VLUHR QAU - Quality Assurance Unit of the Flemish Council of Universities and University Colleges, Belgium.
ZEvA - Central Evaluation and Accreditation Agency, Germany.

6-8pm Mon. 17 June. Two decades of quality assurance at institution level and then at system level in higher Australian education have convinced few outside university marketing departments that real quality is stable or standards are improving. Now the government has put in place a vigorous Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority (TEQSA) to tighten external scrutiny and define and monitor standards of teaching and learning. But can standards be standardized between disciplines and institutions in a meaningful way? How can we accurately register improvements or declines? Is TEQSA summative or developmental? Is the system bigger than TEQSA or with it start to strangle institutional initiative, educational creativity and academic freedom?
Confirmed speakers:
Prof. Pip Pattison, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), University of Melbourne
Prof. Greg Craven, Vice-Chancellor, Australian Catholic University
Chair: Prof. Richard James, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Equity and Student Engagement), University of Melbourne
VENUE: Woodward Conference Centre, 10th Floor, Melbourne Law School, Pelham St, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
Jointly presented by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education & the LH Martin Institute.

DIES ASEAN-QA Training Workshop: External Quality Assurance Track (Phase III)
Following the ASEAN-QA Training Workshop in Potsdam, Germany, 15 participants from the national accreditation bodies of 9 Southeast Asian countries met again for the Third Phase of the ASEAN-QA Training Workshop – External Quality Assurance (EQA) Track in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The training was hosted by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) from 25 February 2013 to 1 March 2013.
The training workshop was jointly conducted by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), and the University of Potsdam, Germany together with partners from Southeast Asia and Europe, i.e. the ASEAN Quality Assurance Network (AQAN), the ASEAN University Network (AUN), the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), and the Southeast Asian Ministries of Education Organization Regional Institute of Higher Education and Development (SEAMEO RIHED).

Call for contribution - The 8th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) will take place at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, on 21-23 November 2013
Through a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, the 2013 EQAF, entitled “Working together to take quality forward”, will combine practice-oriented or research-based discussions that will take place in the paper sessions and workshops with presentations of current developments in quality assurance. This year the Forum will specifically explore how both individuals and organisations can better understand the role that quality assurance can play in their daily lives, get engaged and work together to take quality forward.
The Forum organisers, ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE, have now opened a call for contributions from QA practitioners in higher education institutions and quality assurance agencies, students, institutional leaders and researchers in the field. Two types of contributions are sought: papers and workshops.
The deadline to submit contributions is 2 August 2013. For more information, please consult the call here.
EQAF 2013 Submission Form Paper
EQAF 2013 Submission Form Workshop
Further information on the event, including the programme and registration information will become available in summer 2013.
Please do not hesitate to contact Ivana Juraga (ivana.juraga@eua.be) should you have any questions.

This event is launched by the European University Association (EUA) in partnership with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Lisbon and the University of Zagreb.
The project wants to incentivize those in charge of managing quality processes at universities to take on the responsibility for quality. For that purpose, the idea is to develop and implement three training workshops with a practical approach to strengthening quality cultures and providing quality managers. These workshops will also give the opportunity to exchange experiences and build connections for future cooperation at European level as well as collect feedback, while exploring questions such as: How to build effective communication structures for engaging staff and students in quality culture? How to use staff development as a means for enhancing quality? How to connect QA to the decision-making processes at all levels? How to avoid hindering creativity at the university through bureaucratic QA processes?
The workshops will take place in Lisbon, Portugal on 8-10 April 2013, Zagreb, Croatia on 22-24 May 2013, and Essen, Germany on 26-28 June 2013.
More information about this event…