Work-based quality: a collusion waiting to happen?

The nature of quality in work-based and workplace learning is ambiguous, not least because the outcomes expected are far from clear for those expecting academic achievement. This lack of clarity in fusing the two worlds of academic discovery and workplace activity, perhaps inherently poorly designed for collaboration, in most cases causes a collision. Report after report illustrates governments’ inability to resolve the real purpose and quality of work-related learning as part of an academic award. Although the argument here will be based on UK practice, it is but a mere example of the problems that abound throughout the world. The World Bank, UNESCO and the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) all seem unable to take a leap of faith from institutional distinction and financial imperative to find a way in which we can attest the quality of work-related learning. To seek an appropriate response, a good choice of viewpoint to see the ambiguities, conflicts and incongruities of the rhetoric of quality and the reality of the practice enterprise is the recent UK Wilson Report. The bridge between these two worlds comprises the metaphors of business, and especially the service delivery of supply chains and customers of market choice, and valued-added offerings. Wilson (2012) is quite clear and set out in the preface to the report: