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Quest
Towards excellence
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN
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The ISO certification cannot better the education system, but it can definitely improve the effectiveness of the school.
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A standard or a benchmark is rather abstract and we'd notice only if it were absent. When expectations are met, quality is taken for granted. For example, when your favourite brand of chocolate doesn't taste as good as it usually does, you'd probably say, "It's not up to the mark." But as long as it tasted good you wouldn't really care if the company manufacturing the chocolate maintained a certain degree of excellence or not.
And that's where the International Organisation for Standardisation or ISO comes in. ISO develops international standards that make products or services consistent in quality. ISO certification says that the processes and procedures relating to a particular service meet a certain internationally accepted standard.
The ISO standard that you'd come across frequently would be ISO 9000. This is concerned with quality management, which is making sure that the organisation, whether a school or a company enhances customer satisfaction by meeting customer and regulatory requirements, and continuously improves its performance. "ISO 9000 is a process-oriented standard, awarded on the basis of the systems and procedures in place in the organisation," explains an auditor of Bureau Veritas Quality International (BVQI), one of the certifying authorities.
The traditional focus of the ISO 9000 standard was manufacturing companies. Recently, schools are also beginning to apply the "best business practices" found in the ISO 9000 requirements to their educational environments. In Chennai, A.M.M. School received ISO 9001:2000 certification for institutional development, assessment and administration this March, while Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan S.S.S. (P.S.B.B) obtained the certification for its administrative wing in December 2002. "The main concept of the ISO certification is `do what you say and say what you do'," explains R.S. Sadagopan, general manager of P.S.B.B. This means that the school decides the areas in which it would like the ISO to certify its efficiency and methodology; for example P.S.B.B. has put only its administrative wing to the test, while A.M.M. School has decided to get its entire operations — academic and administrative — certified. "We felt that getting ISO certification for the entire school was more sensible since it would mean efficiency and organisation for the entire school," says Anna George, principal A.M.M. School.
Getting ISO certification is not something that can be done overnight. Once a school decides it wants to be assessed, it has to prepare a manual. This is part of the pre-assessment and sets out the school's vision, empowerment and leadership initiatives, faculty development, planning, communication, management ideals and more. "We document all the systems and processes in the running of school and the outside authority comes to verify whether we follow what we claim," says Mr. Sadagopan.
Every single process from how to handle a field trip to how to conduct examinations is systematised and has to be implemented. The best part of the ISO system is that it's not person-oriented, explains Ms. George. "Everything has been set out clearly and responsibility has been allocated, so even if the heads are not available, the school will run smoothly."
Schools are finding that an ISO 9000 quality management system provides a central management tool to make sure everyone is satisfied — students, staff, parents, trustees and the public. "It's not a matter of prestige," says Mr. Sadagopan, "We just wanted to address areas that parents or students might not have been happy with."
The staff seem to find the systematised approach that ISO requires more beneficial. "There's greater accountability in this system," says Shirley Dyall, the headmistress of A.M.M. School. "Everyone is responsible, so there's greater motivation to work." Teachers act as internal auditors who do the periodical checks, while the certifying authority come in every six months. The ISO certificate is valid for three years. Ms. Dyall adds that relationships between teachers have improved since the system is more transparent and the teachers share experiences. "Communication and discussion is a big part of the systems put in place by ISO certification," says Ms. George. "Now each person understands the other's role."
Through the use of internal and external audits, the administration receives feedback as to how well the school is performing. Internal day-to-day operations are assessed to ensure consistency and discrepancies are reported immediately. Schools are targeting a more efficient operation with a built-in problem solving system.
"But you need a clear vision with achievable goals and objectives to make the certification a success. This is education, not a product, so our aim is quality in imparting skills, knowledge and competence," says Ms. George. It also involves constant work to maintain the system. "It's a continuous cycle of plan-do-check-act," explains Sophia Varkey, one of the management representatives of A.M.M. School. "We have workshops and meetings to plan the processes and how we can improve them."
Though ISO certification cannot better the education system, it improves the effectiveness of the school, says the BVQI official.
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