Networking for Quality Culture and Assurance (NQCA) is a strategic partnership project funded under the Erasmus+ programme. It aims to design, develop and implement a model of Interagency working which focuses on Quality Culture and Quality Assurance across the VET journey.

Eight partners from across six programme countries (Ireland, Northern Ireland, Finland, UK, Germany, Hungary, and Italy) will adapt and develop the Net-Working for Quality Assurance model (developed in a previous Leonardo da Vinci TOI project - LLP/LdV/TOI/2012/IRL-502) so as to ensure its relevance across a wider VET journey. This journey is defined as including some/all of the following stages: decision to access VET, through employment services, through a guidance process, initial referral into VET, VET provision, transition to employment/ higher education, up-skilling in the workplace.

DURING THE PROJECT LIFETIME THE NQCA PARTERSHIP AIMS TO:

• Research VET journeys, identify VET case studies, research QA/quality culture/Interagency working and develop an NQCA model
• Further develop NQA as a quality label
• Design and test Master training and NQCA training
• Implement 91 interagency meetings across 7 countries at local, regional/national and learner levels
• Participate in 6 transnational meetings and 7 multiplier events
• Take a serious approach to Policy-Practice gaps, create a space for this dialogue and design a Toolkit for Policy Makers to support sustainability and recognition.
• NQCA will demonstrate the value created through use of a Social Impact Evaluation and disseminate widely the learning achieved.

 ANTICIPATED IMPACT:

1. Learner impact: quality will underpin their entire VET journey, placing the learner at the centre of VET provision.
2. Participating organisations:  development of interagency working and quality culture, enabling bottom up approaches to QA, creating geographical areas recognised by the NQA quality label
3. National organisations: improve channels of communications between the bottom up approach & the top down policy approach, to lessen the gap between policy and practice, and enable quality culture to exist within the full quality cycle.
4. Creation of forums and interagency networks in order to support organisations to work on/understand quality in VET
5. NQCA seeks to have long term enduring impact on partners & stakeholders as it will affect values, beliefs and behaviours and is a model which is transferable to many situations, contexts and other sectors. Improved cooperation between stakeholders will lead to improved quality across the VET journey, ultimately impacting on the low skilled and the unemployed.

 Our European Partners are:

• BALLYMUN JOB CENTRE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY LIMITED (Ireland)
• GEMS Northern Ireland Limited (Northern Ireland)
• Turun kaupunki - Åbo stad (Finland)
• MetropolisNet EEIG (European Network, based in Berlin)
• C.I.O.F.S. Formazione Professionale (Italy)
• RINOVA LIMITED (United Kingdom)
• Heves Megyei Kereskedelmi és Iparkamara (Hungary)