Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)
It is a condition of AGCAS membership that services achieve matrix Accreditation every 6 years. Over the past 12 months, the AGCAS Quality and Membership Advisory Group (QMAG) has been working to develop an alternative approach to CQI support other than the 3 year matrix Review. After consultation with members and services in 2006, a pilot scheme involving 5 services was launched in the period before Easter 2007 to test a number of alternative approaches to matrix Review, including visits from an external adviser. Arising from the pilot, a number of very positive benefits were identified:
- the self-assessment process used;
- the objective external perspective;
- the focus on specific issues as chosen by services;
- getting new staff involved in CQI;
- the non-threatening/non-judgmental approach that a review (rather than an assessment) offered.
Incorporating the lessons learnt from the pilot, AGCAS has introduced acceptable CQI arrangements for those services not proceeding to matrix review or re-accreditation before the 6 year stage. None of the options offered seek to replicate a matrix Assessment; all have the aim of supporting and encouraging services in the development of their own CQI processes.
The AGCAS Board has agreed that a matrix Review, or a new accreditation, for example as part of a Student Services assessment, is the preferred method of maintaining CQI within services. However, for those services not wishing to do this, services will be encouraged, without prescription or compulsion, to maintain their CQI in one or more of the following ways:
1. An internal review including a self-assessment process
This could be an internal university review conducted by someone external to the Careers Service or an internal CQI procedure incorporated into an annual review process verified by a line manager from outside the service.
2. External consultancy delivering an external review or assessment
With this option a consultant or adviser would work with a service to help clarify issues or problems, to gather feedback and information and then to help create the conditions for the service to make its own free and informed choices. Examples could be a health check by a matrix adviser or a review of one aspect of CQI/matrix elements 5 - 8, eg feedback. Consultancy should facilitate the development of the skills for future problem solving. The role of the consultant would be to facilitate the process, not to control the content or lead the group toward pre-determined solutions. AGCAS will identify suitable CQI consultants and provide training in facilitation skills should this option prove popular with services.
3. Self-assessment with support through a mentoring relationship
Any mentor involved would be expected to have thorough experience of the process with their role being to provide support, advice and guidance. AGCAS may need to recruit or identify a number of people with experience and credibility and possibly provide them with training in mentoring.
4. Self-assessment with support through a ‘buddying' relationship
This would involve finding a partner service possibly on the basis of location, similarity, friendship or mutual respect. This type of supportive relationship would not assume a difference in experience or skill but rely on a mutual agreement to provide services to each other, eg an external viewpoint, peer review, impartial feedback, hidden customer.
5. Coaching
This option would involve some specific and planned activity designed to improve skilled performance. It would be a cyclical process involving observation of performance, followed by detailed feedback, suggestions for improvement and then fresh observation of performance until the agreed standard of performance is reached. This may be appropriate if a service decides to focus its interim CQI activity on improving a specific area of their performance. The coach would need to have specific expertise plus coaching skills. It maybe possible to meet some coaching needs through bespoke training, or through engaging an external coach.
All services would be expected to use a self-assessment process; to assist with this a self-assessment form has been designed by QMAG. Services are also encouraged to make use of A Guide to the matrix Standard for Higher Education Careers Services.
QMAG will be setting up regional CQI support groups/quality circles, initially in the North-west in Spring 2008. The specific agenda of these groups will be determined by the group but with an overall remit to provide mutual support, facilitate the exchange of good practice and commission training as appropriate.
All services will be encouraged, as good practice, to register their CQI arrangements with AGCAS. Guidelines will be available shortly to assist services through these new arrangements.
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matrix Standard downloads
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CQI downloads
- CQI guidelines for AGCAS services (Locked)
- Self-assessment form for AGCAS services (Locked)
- CQI strategy for AGCAS services (Locked)