Empowering Customers: Labelling and Scorecards
This work takes forward the proposal made in Towards Ambition 2020: Skills, jobs, growth to “Increase trust in, and authority to, learning providers, through the use of outcome-based public course labelling and institutional scorecards, which empower customers and communities to drive provider responsiveness, quality and continuous improvement”.
This follows the key principle that the content of learning and qualifications should be shaped by the relevant sector and that quality, supply and performance should be driven by informed customers – customers being both learners and employers.
‘Towards Ambition 2020: Skills, jobs, growth’ states that this can be achieved through:
- Publicly funded providers consulting widely with employers and other stakeholders to better shape their mix of provision to the needs of the labour market.
- Publicly funded providers to make available information about key outputs, particularly outcomes such as learner success rates, destination, wage gain, quality and satisfaction of learners and employers.
- Creating a new institutional performance framework for providers which balances evidence of their contribution to the economic, social and labour market characteristics of the local labour market with outcomes at an individual level.
To be successful this work needs to be led by the sector – not driven by central government. The National Improvement Partnership Board is a sector led group that has agreed to oversee work this year to explore the concept of course labelling and institutional scorecards in more detail. The UK Commission is an observer on the board and will use this role to work in partnership with the sector to develop this issue further.
