[This briefing is also available as a single-sheet PDF.]

In a nutshell, the QAA’s criticism was that business schools taught Quality Management (QM) but chose not to ‘eat their own cooking’. In response, the QuBE project was proposed by a consortium of six FE & HE institutions in England and Northern Ireland as a means to identify, develop and disseminate remedies[1]. These partners all offer business and management courses and are among the small group of institutions that are consistently awarded a rating of 4 out of 4 for QME.

By the time funding was awarded by HEFCE, in late 2004, two significant changes had altered the picture.

1. empirical observation indicated that funding and recruitment pressures had obliged most of the lowest scoring institutions to take urgent steps to bring their rating up to 2 or more out of 4.
2. discontinuance of the QAA subject review process meant there would be no precise way to gauge any improvements resulting from the QuBE project’s work

At the inaugural meeting of the project the consortium’s six research partners and three advisory partners considered the possibility that QME might have become ‘yesterday’s battle’. In 2000 the accent was on ‘improving teaching quality’ in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. However, the prevailing quality regime has since shifted towards ‘improving the student experience’.

However, the QuBE partners recognised that student-centred engagement[2] requires schools to offer more than efficiency and effectiveness. They observed that in the face of global competitive pressures, leading schools have been building on their sound quality assurance practice in order to progress towards excellence in teaching and learning – quality management. The partners concluded that the original QuBE proposal remains highly relevant because the quest for better quality will always be an ongoing process.

But today we need a ‘twin track’ approach that will provide two types of deliverable for fostering improved teaching and learning.

The first type is concerned with efficient and effective procedures, processes, tools and techniques for achieving quality assurance and compliance (represented by a blue arrow in the QuBE Quality Transformation Model). For convenience we call this type ‘Quality Assurance’ (QA). In essence QA-type deliverables are designed to help an institution to improve from an ‘unsatisfactory’ to a ‘satisfactory’ state and thereby meet the criteria required by accreditation bodies. It is the process described and audited by the QME process with which HE institutions are familiar.

The second type is concerned with innovative teaching and learning approaches that can help an institution to progress beyond a ‘satisfactory’ level towards an ‘extraordinary’ level of performance (represented by a green arrow in the QuBE Quality Transformation Model). For convenience this type is called ‘Quality Management’.

According to these distinctions, QA in teaching and learning is concerned with hygiene, housekeeping and bureaucratic checklists. In comparison, QM-type deliverables set out to inspire high quality institutions to advance to an outstanding level of quality and thereby differentiate themselves in an increasing crowded and international market place for business and management programmes. The concept was crystallised in a presentation discussed by QuBE Partners in October 2005. It is characterised as the ‘QuBE Quality Transformation Model’[3].

Consultation with the HE Academy elicited support for this ‘twin track’ approach and also highlighted the possibility that the Bologna Accord[4] was a contributory factor driving this pursuit of excellence[5].

All project outputs shown in the agreed workplans[6] for Year 2 have been subdivided into

• Deliverables for improving performance from unsatisfactory to satisfactory
  The focus of these is on achieving compliance and accreditation
• Deliverables for improving performance from satisfactory to extraordinary
  The focus of these is on ‘making yourself special’’

QuBE research fieldwork has continued in order to create, present and disseminate knowledge and resources that assist both tracks – that is, the creation, presentation and dissemination of resources for achieving QA and inspiration for stretching towards QM.