Teacher Education, Access and Quality Control in Higher Education: lessons from America for Britain's policy‐makers

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Abstract
During the late 1980s, HMI renewed its interest in comparative education with the publication of a series of reports on aspects of education overseas. During this period there were a number of HMI visits to the USA which resulted in special attention being given to the American experience, particularly in regard to tertiary education. An examination of the ‘American’ reports reveals both the preoccupations of HMI and the DES during this period and provides interesting insights into areas of American practice which were considered relevant to UK policy‐making. This paper examines several crucial areas in higher education which caught the attention of HMI. The first is alternative approaches to teacher education, where the New Jersey experiment in school‐based induction coincided with UK moves to establish the licensed and articled teacher schemes. Quality control and the monitoring of education indicators in higher education are further areas where the American experience appears to be more developed and established and where the HMI reports draw interesting parallels. The broader access to higher education available in America is a further area of discussion directly related to government objectives in expanding student numbers in the UK. The willingness of HMI to embark on this comparative study, while limited to observation only, is significant and, one hopes, will continue under its new guise and structure.

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