Developing a National Quality Assurance Model for Technical and Vocational Education in Nigeria: A Benchmarking Study

This study develops a national quality assurance model for technical and vocational education in Nigeria through rigorous international benchmarking analysis. Despite the existence of accreditation processes administered by the National Board for Technical Education and related bodies, Nigeria lacks a comprehensive, outcomes-focused quality assurance model that integrates institutional, programme, and system-level quality dimensions. This represents a significant gap in the quality governance infrastructure for technical education. This study employs a comparative policy analysis design, benchmarking the Nigerian VTE quality assurance context against five international systems with recognised quality infrastructure: Germany, South Korea, Australia, Rwanda, and South Africa. Primary data are gathered through semi-structured interviews with 50 quality assurance officials, VTE policy experts, and institutional quality managers in Nigeria and through documentary analysis of quality assurance legislation, accreditation frameworks, and quality reports across all six benchmark countries. Grounded comparative analysis, supplemented by the logic model methodology, generates a model grounded in both international best practice and Nigerian contextual realities. The resulting National Quality Assurance Model incorporates institutional self-evaluation, external peer review, qualification standard auditing, graduate outcome monitoring, and continuous improvement cycles. Theoretical contributions include a contextually adapted quality assurance framework grounded in comparative VTE systems analysis. Practical contributions include a policy white paper and implementation roadmap. Keywords: quality assurance, technical education, Nigeria, benchmarking, national model