The theme of my paper is the National Council for Educational Awards (NCEA) ACCS (Accumulation of Credits and Certification of Subjects) scheme, an initiative in part-time education.
The NCEA was established in 1972, and placed on a statutory footing in 1979 as the government agency with responsibility for qualifications and standards in the extra-university sector of higher education. As a developmental agency, the NCEA is committed to improving opportunities for participation in higher education, in particular by promoting greater flexibility in the provision and delivery of courses leading to its awards.
The NCEA hopes that the ACCS scheme will be a force for change in higher education, and will lead to greater equality of opportunity for part-time students in institutions associated with the NCEA.
All things considered, the seventy-five per cent of mature students who study part-time have had a raw deal in a higher education sector characterised by chronic inflexibility, difficult access, restricted choice and poor student support. The low status of part-time education in Ireland, particularly in the extra-university sector, contrasts with the position in many other countries. The OECD 11991, p.78) has commented that "in each of the Anglophone countries with the exception of Ireland ... part-time participation is the predominant mode for non-university tertiary education."
There is nevertheless evidence that demand for higher education on a part-time basis is growing, and that the increase in full-time student numbers is being paralleled by increases in part-time student numbers. Table 1 shows the pattern of the enrolments of part-time students in the various sectors of higher education over a ten-year period. The statistics relate to courses where the entry requirement was the Leaving Certificate and they reflect a ratio of part-time to full-time enrolment of approximately 1:4.
Colleges associated with the NCEA have always had the option of offering their approved courses as part-time courses. In such cases, the Council has sought to satisfy itself that the standard of the part-time provision was close to that provided for full-time students. Noting the special difficulties associated with quantifying part-time courses, the Council in its central policy document NCEA Awards, Range, Levels and Criteria (1987, p.18, 3.4.8) has indicated "that such courses should normally be of one full academic year's duration longer than a full-time course leading to the same award."
This means, for example, that a National Certificate course, which runs for two years if taken full-time, will normally take three years to complete on a part-time basis, while an NCEA degree course, which full-time can be of a three-year or four-year duration, will generally take four or five years to complete as a part-time course. Increasingly, however, attendance over four years is becoming the norm for part-time degree courses.
Table 2 presents statistics of awards to part-time and full-time students. It shows that the impact of part-time courses leading to NCEA awards has been relatively slight and that, in fact, the number of qualifications obtained through part-time study decreased between 1986 and 1992.
Table 3 gives a breakdown of NCEA awards to part-time students by type of institution. It may be observed from the table that, in recent years, the majority of qualifications awarded by the NCEA to part-time students have been awarded at a small number of colleges which cater exclusively or largely for part-time students, i.e. the Irish Management Institute, the Institute of Public Administration, and the National College of Industrial Relations. The only other significant providers of part-time courses leading to NCEA awards have been the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) colleges. Opportunities for obtaining national qualifications through part-time study at the Regional Technical Colleges (RTCs), the largest group of colleges associated with the NCEA, have been exceptionally limited, and in fact have declined since the mid-1980s. This contrasts sharply with the position for full-time students: the majority of full-time students at RTCs follow courses approved by the NCEA and qualify for NCEA awards.
The provision of a comprehensive awards system which would meet the needs of different kinds of learners has been central to the philosophy of the NCEA since its establishment:
The Council, as a fundamental element in its policy and philosophy, has adopted the aim of providing an awards structure capable of meeting all needs for formal certification of third-level educational attainment at institutions outside the universities. The Council's award structure is designed to facilitate the provision of a system of higher education which strives to realise effective equality of educational opportunity and participation (NCEA, 1987, p.2).
This policy aim has generated the various initiatives which have been developed by the NCEA since the late-1970s, culminating in the ACCS scheme. An early NCEA document proposed a modular Foundation Certificate to be awarded on the accumulation of 'work units' which could be used to secure exemptions on National Certificate and Diploma courses (1978). This was followed up in a 1981 submission to the Commission on Adult and Continuing Education.
The mid-1980s was a period of fairly intense debate throughout the NCEA sector concerning alternative forms of education which could be offered to particular student audiences as alternatives to mainstream education. In response to the Commission on Adult Education's Lifelong Learning report (1983), the NCEA established a working party whose deliberations resulted in the publication in 1985 of a further discussion document, Towards Facilitating Awards for Adult and Continuing Education. This recommended that the NCEA should recognise single-subject courses or modules and create a scheme for the accumulation of credits towards national awards.
In this series of policy documents, the NCEA can be seen to be feeling its way towards the integration of the NCEA awards framework with a modular credit system The basis for such integration was finally established with the launching of the ACCS scheme. Details of the scheme are set out in a document entitled NCEA Accumulation of Credits and Certification of Subjects (1989).
The essential elements of this scheme are:-
In choosing a currency for its credit accumulation system, the NCEA opted for the educational equivalent of the 'ecu'. The European Community Course Credit Transfer Scheme (ECTS), designed to facilitate student exchange, adopted sixty credits per academic year (ERASMUS Bureau, 1990). ACCS has adopted the same number.
In identifying the course subject as the basic unit of credit accumulation, ACCS introduced a fairly conservative form of modularisation, a subject constituting a year-long module. This was important in that it reflected the way in which most colleges were organised; the scheme could therefore be introduced rapidly, without radical reorganisation. The foreword to the ACCS document (1989) pointed out that over five thousand subjects could potentially be offered under the scheme.
The scheme has been in operation since 1989 and the NCEA has recently undertaken some initial research into its impact.
ACCS - An Assessment
Table 4 sets out the details of qualifications awarded under the ACCS scheme in the first six years following its introduction, indicating numbers of awards by college during the period from 1990 to 1995.
The table shows that the first year of the scheme resulted in twelve awards and that there was an increase in each successive year after that, so that by 1995 the number had risen to one hundred and sixty seven. In 1995, the 167 ACCS awards comprised 1.4% of total NCEA awards. This is not exactly setting the world on fire, but it is a start.
Table 5 gives details of NCEA awards by discipline and by mode of study for 1992. That year is taken as being typical. The figures reflect a significant difference in the pattern of awards to date as between part-time and ACCS modes of study. The majority of part-time awards in the NCEA system have been in Business Studies, with relatively few in Science and Engineering, and none in Humanities. Again, the pattern of part-time awards is related to the nature of the institutions providing part-time courses, the majority of which are engaged mainly in business education. We are pleased to see more of a balance emerging under the ACCS scheme, with qualifications awarded in each of the disciplines where the NCEA makes awards.
Table 6 gives a breakdown of NCEA ACCS awards by discipline for each year of the scheme's operation. It indicates that awards through ACCS have been fairly evenly distributed across the disciplines, with 29.8% in the Humanities, 20.6% in Business Studies, 25.7% in Engineering and 23.9% in Science. We are particularly encouraged to find that practically half of ACCS awards have been in the technologies, given that these areas have not featured in part-time education within the NCEA sector up to now. Naturally, given that the numbers are still so small and that the scheme is still relatively new, the NCEA is not allowing itself to be carried away by these statistics, but so far we like what has been happening. We note, however, that after a slow start, ACCS awards in Business Studies showed a very dramatic increase in 1995, accounting for 43.7% of the total.
Table 7 lists NCEA awards to ACCS students by college for the years 1990 to 1995 combined. The table shows that the largest number of ACCS awards (ninety-six) was obtained at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design, closely followed by Waterford Regional Technical College (ninety-four awards). Not surprisingly, the growth of ACCS has not been consistent across the colleges; the proportions do not reflect the relative size of colleges. With the scheme, as with so many other endeavours, progress in colleges has depended on the enthusiasm and willingness to participate of individuals in the different schools or departments.
Table 8 gives a breakdown of NCEA awards to ACCS students, by type of institutions. It shows that almost seventy per cent of ACCS awards were obtained at RTCs. This means that most awards achieved under the ACCS scheme have been obtained at colleges outside the Greater Dublin area. In this respect, the table contrasts with the position shown in an earlier table of awards to other part-time students, which were predominantly in Dublin. The ACCS scheme can be seen to have achieved a strong foothold in part-time education in RTCs in a relatively short period of time.
The relatively low impact so far of ACCS on the three colleges referred to above (IPA, IMI, and NCIR) which have traditionally catered for part-time students also deserves comment. The fact that those colleges already had long-established and well-structured part-time courses meant that there was less urgency for them to introduce the scheme than there was in colleges with little previous part-time provision. We nevertheless have evidence that ACCS is beginning to take hold in the traditional part-time colleges, where significant numbers of single-subjects awards have been made.
Table 9 analyses ACCS awards by discipline and by gender. The table shows that, between 1990 and 1995, 55.1% of students who qualified for ACCS awards were male and 44.9% were female. The gender breakdown is slightly more balanced than that revealed in the Interim Report of the Steering Committee's Technical Working Group (1995) which found that 58% of part-time students in higher education were male. In some respects, the gender balance in ACCS has been stereotypical in that males have outnumbered females in Engineering and Science, while females have been to the fore in the Humanities. We nevertheless have the interesting and fairly unusual phenomenon for Business Studies of females outnumbering males by two to one. Naturally, given that the scheme is still at a fairly early stage, and that its development is so uneven in terms of the availability of courses, we are not reading too much into this finding yet.
Table 10 analyses ACCS awards by level of award and by gender. The table shows that awards from One-Year Certificate to Graduate Diploma level are now available through ACCS. While no Masters Degrees have yet been awarded through the scheme, a number of taught Masters courses are now offered through ACCS. This means that qualifications at all levels in the NCEA awards ladder are now available through the scheme. The National Certificate is the qualification with most ACCS awards, and is also the qualification most commonly awarded to full-time students. National Certificates accounted for 39.1% of ACCS awards made from 1990 to 1995, National Diplomas for 31.4%, and One-Year Certificates for 18.3%. In addition, a small number of Graduate Diplomas (fifteen, representing three per cent of the total) were awarded. It is notable, but not surprising given the duration of most degree courses, that no degrees were awarded during the first four years of ACCS. By 1994, however, two students had managed to accumulate the credits needed to qualify for a degree award, and the number of degree awards increased significantly in 1995. It should be pointed out that some of the ACCS degree awards were 'Mode 1' degrees, that is degrees designed specifically for holders of National Diplomas and of one year's full-time duration.
It is not surprising that in the early years of ACCS, the highest proportion of qualifications awarded should have been based on courses of shortest duration. We can see that this pattern is changing over time. A notable aspect of the literature on credit schemes, however, is the importance placed on interim qualifications. The Associate degree in the US system is frequently referred to; Choosing to Change, a major report on the Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS) in the UK, for example, recommends that a "a strong and credible intermediate qualification should be established, with the designation of an Associate degree" (Robertson, 1994, p.157).
Intermediate qualifications are seen as important for stimulating initial entry, while providing staging points enabling students, if necessary or should they so choose, to exit from the system with a qualification and to resume their studies later when their circumstances permit. Waterhouse (1992) indicated that after one year of full-time equivalent study, a student might exit with a certificate, after two years with a diploma, and after three years with a Bachelor's degree. Robertson points out, however, that the interim qualifications (the Certificate of Higher Education and the Diploma of Higher Education) introduced as part of the Council for National Academic Awards' CATS Scheme in the UK have not been successful because they have had poor status and have been regarded as lesser, partial versions of degrees rather than as qualifications in their own right. The capacity of the ACCS scheme to deliver 'interim' awards at the levels of One-Year Certificate, National Certificate and National Diploma, which are well-accepted national awards, as well as at degree and post-graduate levels, may be considered to be a strength of the scheme.
Another area the NCEA was interested in tracking was the length of time taken by students to obtain qualifications. Again, it was no surprise to learn that this was directly related to course organisation in colleges. The majority of students completed courses in the shortest time possible at a given college. In the years we looked at, only a minority of students took advantage of the flexibility of ACCS by accumulating credits slowly.
These then are our principal preliminary findings concerning the ACCS scheme:
The Technical Working Group - whose research influenced the 1995 Report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education - identified in its Report (1995) a variety of obstacles and constraints, financial and institutional, affecting the participation of part-time students in higher education. The Steering Committee (HEA, 1995, p. 87) endorsed the view of the Technical Working Group that "facilitating students attending part-time is both highly desirable and cost effective."
The NCEA is encouraged by its preliminary findings concerning the ACCS scheme. The scheme does seem to be removing some obstacles and constraints in the way of part-time students. The Council realises, of course, that there is still a long way to go. In particular, we are acutely conscious of the need for greater promotion of the scheme by the NCEA, so that potential students will be made aware of the opportunities now available and of the flexibility which ACCS provides. In referring (in its White Paper on Education and Training, Teaching and Learning: Towards the Learning Society) to flexibility in educating and training students as "the central question", the European Commission (1995, p.23) may have overstated the case. We nevertheless take a certain comfort in the knowledge that the NCEA has at least addressed that question.
Commission of the European Community. White Paper on Education and Training. Teaching and Learning: Towards the Learning Society COM (95) 590 Final, (European Commission, Luxembourg , 1995).
Commission on Adult Education. Lifelong Learning Report, (The Stationery Office, Dublin, 1983).
ERASMUS Bureau. ECTS European Community Course Credit Transfer System Presentation of the ECTS Pilot Scheme (Second edition), (ERASMUS Bureau, Brussels, 1990).
Higher Education Authority. Report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education, (HEA, Dublin, 1995).
NCEA. Discussion Document on an NCEA Award Structure for Recurrent Education, (NCEA, Dublin, 1978).
NCEA. Towards Facilitating Awards for Adult and Continuing Education, (NCEA, Dublin, 1985).
NCEA. NCEA Awards, Range, Levels and Criteria, (NCEA, Dublin, 1987).
NCEA. Accumulation of Credits and Certification of Subjects, (NCEA, Dublin, 1989).
OECD. Education at a Glance OECD Indicators, (OECD, Paris, 1992).
Robertson, D. (ed.) / Higher Education Quality Council. Choosing to Change: Extending Access, Choice and Mobility in Higher Education, (HEQC, London, 1994).
Technical Working Group for the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education. Interim Report. (HEA, Dublin, 1995).
Waterhouse, R. The Educational Potential of Credit Systems, (TEXT Consortium Ltd./Derbyshire College of Higher Education, Derby, 1992).
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