Quality assurance must protect quality jobs in the education sector
As the European Union and the countries of the Bologna Process place increasing attention on quality assurance, ETUCE’s newly adopted position paper requests policy makers to ensure that education trade unions are systematically involved in the design, implementation, evaluation and follow‑up of quality assurance systems.
The position paper stresses that quality assurance must go beyond technical procedures or narrow performance indicators and reflect the real conditions under which education takes place. A key demand is that quality assurance must systematically monitor staff wellbeing and working conditions and that credible quality assurance depends on strong social dialogue. ETUCE insists that workload, staffing, job security, salaries, career progression, respect for collective agreements and access to continuous professional development are core quality criteria, not peripheral issues of quality assurance. Quality education cannot be delivered where staff face precarity, excessive workloads or inadequate pay.
Education trade unions underline that quality assurance in education must remain a public responsibility, governed democratically, and not be turned into a market for services. Also, quality assurance frameworks must explicitly protect professional autonomy and academic freedom of staff, collegial governance and institutional autonomy.
The position paper also links quality assurance closely to public investment in education. ETUCE warns that reliance on short‑term or project‑based funding undermines institutional stability and fuels staff precarity in the education sectors. Quality assurance frameworks should therefore assess whether education systems and institutions benefit from sufficient, predictable public funding to fulfil their public mission.
At the same time, ETUCE rejects quality assurance approaches that marginalise professional expertise. Teachers’ professional judgement and peer review must remain central, while overreliance on quantitative indicators risks reducing quality assurance to a control exercise rather than a tool for improvement.
By adopting this position, ETUCE aims to contribute to ongoing policy developments such as the revision of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, discussions within the Bologna Process, and related EU initiatives.