JEDDAH: The third symposium on technical and administrative training and education, under the sponsorship of Jeddah Gov. Prince Mishaal bin Majed, opened in Jeddah yesterday at the InterContinental Hotel. The symposium, entitled “Total Quality management in Training and Education,” attracted speakers addressing an audience of academics from across the Kingdom.
“The main objectives of the two-day symposium are to highlight the importance and benefits of the application of total quality management in raising the productivity of education and training institutions and improving their output,” said Mansour Al-Mimani, dean of Jeddah College of Technology (JCT).
“It also provides an opportunity for educational and training institutions to exchange information about successful experiences and best practices about the application of total quality systems among educational institutions in Saudi Arabia,” Al-Mimani added.
He noted that the development of a sound technological training for students was an essential element of the educational mix for young Saudis to address the development of the Kingdom.
Keynote speaker Arthur Morgan, head of Learning and Teaching at the University of Glamorgan Business School, who spoke on the transformative effect of quality assurance, said that the main element was change itself.
“Change is inevitable and if we resist it we will be creating problems,” he said. “Change in higher education for me is not about simply providing graduate students with a degree, but (rather) the whole process from recruiting them, supporting them during training and determining what resources are necessary and what academic staff needed. When they graduate, we also consider what we do with them afterward, as I believe we have an ongoing relationship with them.”
John McDonald, director of Business Development at the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), oversees vocational training qualifications up to Ph.D level in Scotland, said: “What’s important for us is that young people see professional pathways in their development,” he said. He added that it was important that young people have a clear view of where they are in their educational development.
Through the British Council, the SQA has had a relationship with JCT for some time, and has associations through educational projects with 13 countries.
“The JTC is interested in developing a national framework system for qualifications that supports the work the college is doing,” said McDonald. “They are looking at the qualifications systems that are out there and taking the best of it to design the Saudi system.”
“One of the messages I gave today was that qualifications need to be transportable, have employer buy-in (credibility), otherwise they are worthless, and they must be good value for the consumer.”
McDonald thought it essential that employers saw the qualifications as something of value and worth having. His experience informed him that what employers wanted in the way of qualifications was not matched by the output of training institutions.
“We make sure the employers are at the table when we design the qualifications. We have their endorsement of it before we go ahead with it in technical schools,” he said.
