Social Work makes it a quality hat-trick

The University of Teesside is celebrating a hat-trick of excellent teaching quality scores for courses offered by its School of Health & Social Care.

Social Work is the latest subject to have achieved a top quality rating from the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education.

The result follows two excellent quality ratings; one for Nursing & Midwifery and the other for courses related to Professions Allied to Medicine such as Physiotherapy, Radiography and Occupational Therapy.

Paul Keane, Director of the School for Health & Social Care at Teesside, said: "Our Social Work staff and students are delighted with this very successful review which means that all subject areas in our School have been deemed excellent in teaching and learning.”

In particular, the QAA praised Social Work at Teesside for providing an excellent range of courses developed in close partnership with the profession.

The QAA also congratulated the Social Work Group for their collaboration with the Teesside Partnership for Social Care, Education & Training - the body bringing together the five local statutory social service departments, voluntary agencies and the University. The QAA said these close working relationships mean that courses maintain ‘currency’ with social work practice and helps to ensure that graduates are adequately prepared for practice.

The QAA found a high regard for the University among employers, with local partner agencies eager to employ students on qualifying.

The Social Work team were commended by the QAA for:-

• an innovative approach to providing multidisciplinary joint degrees with the nursing professions, with 54% of students gaining Upper Second class degrees
• practice learning being ‘well organised, effective and managed collaboratively between students, tutors and relevant agency staff in a way that maximises the benefits to students’
• that ‘student feedback plays a key role in ongoing monitoring and evaluation’ and that ‘programmes are responsive to comments received from students’.
• that the University was responsive to employer interests
• and for the development of Continuing Professional Development short courses in response to the needs of the agencies which form the Partnership

Overall, the QAA review team said they had confidence in the academic standards achieved by the programmes in Social Work at the University of Teesside and praised the ‘well designed curricula which enable the achievement of the learning outcomes’ and the ‘high standard of student achievement’.

The Social Work courses were commended in all three aspects of the quality of learning opportunities under review which covered:

• Teaching and Learning
• Student Progression
• and Learning Resources.

Wade Tovey, Programme Director for Social Work at the University of Teesside, said: “The team is very pleased with the outcome of the review as it affirms the progress that we have made in a range of courses and programmes across the Social Work spectrum. We have worked hard to improve standards, listen to students and practice teachers and develop new approaches and courses. There has also been a great increase in research activity and in publications by all team members which in turn has supported this review.”

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