Luovi Vocational College was responsible for guiding the Peer Review process as a tool for strategic planning in the Skilling Eco VET project in Ghana and Senegal in 2023-2025. It was an ambitious journey starting from the training of the Peers ending up with capacity-building strategies and ongoing improvements.
Continuous improvement, a new approach to strategic planning
The work began by evaluating and analyzing the needs and skills gaps. This served as the basis for capacity building activities in the project. We found out that the organizations had a clear mission and vision, but they desired a more systematic framework to map and develop skills of teachers and other staff members. The objective was to introduce VET providers to the idea of continuous improvement and tools to enhance service quality. Peer visit is only one part of the process. Writing the description of the activities and making self-evaluation are important phases for the peer reviewed organization before the actual Peer visit of Peers takes place.
Peer Review: Building trust and collaboration
Peer Review is a method of external evaluation, criteria-based, highly confidential. It highlights the importance of trained Peers, reviewers. The participants finished their online training which was offered in English and French before they participated in actual Peer visits with one visit held in Ghana and one visit held in Senegal. The initial Peer visits were conducted in person with the next two visits being conducted online. These activities helped everyone grow professionally and brought staff, students, management, and outside partners closer together.
Lessons learned from Peer review
The Peer Review process proved to be a tool for constructive feedback, encouraging participants to reflect on their strengths and areas for improvement. It gathered students, teachers and management from different locations for the first time. It promoted knowledge sharing and inclusion, but we also discovered challenges such as logistics and language barriers. For the future, it is important to focus on communication throughout the process and to pay attention to resource allocation.
Impact
Peer Review is a tool for quality assurance and organizational development. It helps the organizations to focus on the current situation and look at the strengths and areas for development. Constructive feedback from Peers helps the organizations to improve their activities and define their goals and strategies. It is a great way to involve all stakeholders, students, teachers, management and other stakeholders in improvement. Feedback from participants of Peer Review highlighted the value of inclusion, participation, and discussion. “It was a great experience, the process involved all the stakeholders, it was based on the dialogue, funny but very professional”, thinks Fr. Romeo, who actively participated in the Peer review process first time.
Reflections from mentors
For Luovi Vocational College, it was the first time to use Peer Review outside Europe. The experience showed that the concept of Peer review really works. When you are trained to use the method, you can follow the steps and benefit from the process. Online Peer review is possible, but in-person meetings are essential for building trust if you do the Peer review for the first time. Peer review is a learning experience also for the mentors.
How the work goes on: A Model for the future
The Skilling Eco VET project stands as an example how structured Peer Review can contribute to changes and development in vocational education and training. Continuous evaluation of activities and VET programs, collaboration with others and strategic planning can enhance the capacity of the organization and result in delivering more effective VET programs.
The partners involved were the Société Saint François de Salles Senegal and DBYN Ghana. In addition, the three Salesian centers from Dakar, Thiès and Tambacounda were present as well as the two centers Ashaiman and Sunyani in Ghana.
Thanks everybody, this is teamwork.
Mari Kontturi and Jussi Kajander
Luovi Vocational College, Finland
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French