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QUALITY EDUCATION

Quality in schools: CII IQ tryst with TQM implementation

A silent transformation is happening in Indian Schools. During the last five year period (2002-2007) there has been a 40 percent increase in setting up of primary schools. According to District Information System for Education (DISE), the enrollment both at the primary and upper primary level of education increased significantly from 101 million in 2002 to 131 million in 2007. A few States are close to achieving the goal of universal primary enrolment. Similarly, 98 percent of households are now located within 1 KM of a primary school and 84 percent are located within 3 KM of upper primary schools. In addition, the public school system has hired approximately 1.5 million teachers in the past 4 years and the pupil-to-teacher ratio improved from 39 in 2002 to 34 in 2007.

The sudden change in the education sector zeros onto one important factor, that of the Quality concept making a slow but a very firm inroad into this mission critical segment. Without reinventing the wheel, if we need to look at a similar situation in our country it was ‘Quality mantra’ in Indian Industry during 1989 when the markets were opened and the competition was high. The Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy helped the industry in its journey towards achieving business excellence by streamlining various processes through application of quality tools, principles and practices. By adopting TQM tools companies were able to bring visible changes in the systems, strategies and processes ultimately resulting in not only reducing variations, but also rolling out zero-defect products or services to the end-customers. The same philosophy has been tried across the world in various sectors including Education. In India CII Institute of Quality initiated this in Governance, Food and Education for over 18 years. Some of the TQM’s fundamental principles, practices, tools, techniques and frameworks are being adapted and incorporated in the education sector for over the last 12 years keeping in mind specific requirements of improving school education across India.

CII-IQ comprehended quite early that embedding TQM tools can bring sweeping changes in the way education can be imparted in the schools and simultaneously enhance the quality of learning for all the stakeholders especially the principal customer i.e. the student. As a first step towards achieving quality in education, CII-IQ looked at ingraining strategies like goal setting, Process mapping, Vision, Mission, Value statements formulation, encouraged safer and cleaner campus through 5S, propagated Quality Circles at teachers and students level, imbibed seven steps of problem solving, integrated 7 QC tools for academic and administrative processes, utilized colour code for visual controls, stressed on understanding the stakeholders needs and expectations. It further developed CII Education Excellence Model based on learnings from across the globe like. EFQM and others. Today over 65 schools covering government, government aided and privately managed schools have taken up self assessment on the same framework for excellence so as to measure their journey towards excellence and accelerate thereafter.

All these have been piloted and are being adopted by individual to cluster of school managed by government or private. The objective was to help institutions to build robust managements and teaching learning processes to understand, meet and exceed needs and expectations of its key stakeholders resulting in imparting Quality education. Today few of the visible results are increase in the attendance from 40 percent to 80 percent, latecomers reduced from 45 percent to 15 percent, improved student performance from 15 percent to 20 percent, increase in academic result, improved teacher-student-parent relationships with Parent-teacher meeting attendance increasing from 64 percent to 89 percent and Parent talk sessions from nil to 6 per class per year. In addition to the concrete results a Continuous improvement culture through teamwork where teachers and students participation for co-curricular activities and academic to name a few. These are also coupled with challenges like procedural delays, frequent leadership changes at schools and department levels in government school, lack of support staff, assigning government duties to teaching staff, teacher appointments on contracts.

Today stakeholders’ expectations and aspirations are increasing beyond the conventional formats for availing holistic education; to fulfill these expectations of delivering Quality Education has redefined the role of schools. With such initiatives from government, NGOs, Industry associations and other stakeholders, the path for Indian education Quality journey can be tread with small steps but with a purpose of urgency.