QUALITY DEVELOPMENT

IN THE NORWEGIAN MUSIC AND ART SCHOOLS

Organisation: Norsk Kulturskoleråd (Norwegian Council for Music and Art Schools)

Project: KUP (quality development project in the music and art schools)

System: “Kvalitetsutvikling i kulturskolen” (quality development in the music and art school)

From the Norwegian government there is a strong focus on efficiency, quality and better service to the public. It have been launched a national modernisation program, based on the ideas of new public management. In the education sector, it has been many examples on how this wave of modernisation has been put into action. The focus of quality in the universities, colleges, primary and secondary schools are quite strong, but there is no requirement for such thing in the music schools.

The owners of music schools are municipalities. They have one music school or they share the responsibility with one or two neighbour municipalities. The municipality has the responsibility to run the school and for the finance and economics, to fulfil the “music school law”. The state pays approx. 15% the municipalities pay 60% and the pupils 25%. The national organisation, Norsk Kulturskoleråd, is responsible for the development of music schools and their quality management. Members of this organisation are municipalities (410 members – out of 434 municipalities).

In Norway there are no legal quality requirements. As a consequence there is no organisation to control the quality of music schools. It’s also missing a detailed law or regulations, or a compulsory curriculum. Therefore the organisation took the job to write the framework/curriculum for the schools, even if this will not have a binding for the schools. Neither the work with quality will have this. The organisation have also on this field, given themselves the work with creation of a branch specified quality development tool, based on the CAF.

Traditionally the "quality" is taken care of by the managers and the teachers - by their own professional standards, seldom put into a system. Some schools/municipalities (a very few, in fact) have started the work on quality development with quite a different kind of models/system.

The complete system, based on CAF, with set of criteria’s was made during 2001. The evaluation part contended also the use of service declarations and consumer polls.

The reasons that led to the introduction of this particular system are the following:

  • This system is more complete and better suited for the music/art schools than the EFQM system because it is especially made for the public administration sector. Its takes care of both the profession and the consumers.
  • The CAF is a kind of "light" model of the EFQM/Speyer. In the evaluation report of the KKV from the Netherlands, they complained about much paperwork/bureaucracy with the EFQM system. Compared with the EFQM the CAF is easier.

To implement the system Norway started a pilot project in 2001. Some municipalities were invited to join, and the Norsk Kulturskoleråd got funding from the government to do the work. The main goals of the implementation project is to test the system, doing marketing for the system, getting experience from the work and building up knowledge in some schools.

The project is turned out very well, and was closed in 2004. After the end of this project, the system will be market for the rest of the country.

The basic tools in this work were:

  • Designing a complete quality tool
  • Pilot project (2 years, including 2x CAF self assessment)
  • Selling a complete system based on the experiences from the pilot project
  • Printing a handbook/method with CD for all documentation (October 2004)
  • Giving courses which will follow the different steps of the Quality Development process.

The schools will not be given any particular certification for using the system, or reaching good quality standards. There is no need for certification, because a school that reaches a good quality does have to make a proper documentation of this quality. The reliability of this work is based on trust and effort for a better result. The system allows "everybody" to start working with CAF without any particular formal certification and has been recommended by the Norwegian Government, Unit for modernisation, for all municipalities and public administration in general.

We have already made good results. All of the pilot project members (7 member municipalities/schools) reached a higher quality from the first CAF evaluation to the second. It has been made good learning processes, both organisational and also individual. The awareness of quality has reached a high level among the participants. The evaluation groups have been important in the schools, also given the employees participation in both evaluation and planning processes. In this way, the accountability has been stronger.

Also, we believe that to document a good quality, and to show the willingness of striving for development, will give these schools a big force. Both in the local municipality and at national level, there is a struggle for the public founds. Working hard with quality, without been instructed from the government, will perhaps be the “golden solution”.

Even Fossum Svendsen

Project manager/head of quality development