Application of ISO 9000 framework to an educational institute :
“ISO 9000” is the commonly used name to label a series of international standards for quality assurance within organisations: ISO 9001, ISO 9002, ISO 9003, ISO 9004 (and their subsets).
It is based on the following eight principles :
1.Customer focus
2.Leadership
3.Involvement of People
4.Process Approach
5.System Approach to Management
6.Continual Improvement
7.Factual Approach to Decision Making
8.Mutually beneficial to Supplier Relationship
An ISO9000 certificate for an education or trainingorganisation provides “assurance”that it is well organised and that the outcomesof programmes and courses meetthe intended goals and needs of the users;however, it does not necessarilyguarantee that the content of thesecourses and programmes meet a particular educational standard.
Official “standards” for education and training in general refer to required “inputs” (e.g. qualifications of teachers, contents of programmes) or sometimes “outputs” (documents, diplomas). ISO 9000 looks at quality in a different way, by requiring general principles to be followed for controlling the processes within the institutes (“process” or “system” standards).
When an organisation is interested in obtaining an ISO 9000 certificate, in general the following stages will occur:
1.development by the organisation of a quality system which is compliant with the requirements of the norm (ISO 9001or ISO 9002);
2.selection of an accredited certification body;
3.(optional) pre-audit of the quality system by the certification body, followed by corrective measures (if needed);
4.full compliance audit by the certification body, and award of the certificate (if successful);
5.several interim audits with a more limited scope over a period of three years (typically every 6-8 months, but at least once a year);
6.A certificate is only valid for a period of three years.
7.It should be clear that the certifying body has to be paid for its services. This may involve a considerable cost (for an education and training institute it will typically vary between 2500 and 10 000 ECU).
However, this expenditure is only a small part of the overall cost of certification: the lions share is represented by the salaries of the staff members involved with the implementation of the quality system(possibly assisted by external consulting).
Advantages and disadvantages of ISO 9000 certification
Advantages :
future customers likely demand for ISO 9000;
to increase consistency of operations;
to maintain/improve market share;
to improve service quality;
customer pressure;
a good promotional tool;
to make operations more efficient;
to improve product quality
Disadvantages :
A number of important hurdles and problems in relation to ISO 9000 certification:
the time required to write the manual
the high volume of paperwork
the high cost of implementation
the time required to complete implementation
the high cost of maintaining the standard
the lack of free advice
the lack of consistency between auditors
the time spent checking paperwork
prior to audits
Appropriateness of the standard for education and training
The adoption of TQM principles and methods – including those embedded in the ISO 9000 requirements – could be relevant and useful for education and training organisations the promotion of a high quality image, with high visibility and credibility;
a way of responding to external factors, in particular pressures from customers (directly or indirectly), governments or funding bodies;
a method for developing a full quality assurance system which covers the whole organisation;
- the need to improve a number of specific activities of the organisation, which are currently badly organised.
“It remains an open question, however, whether ISO 9000 will ever deeply penetrate the public and non-profit sector (including the education world). This is linked to questions of appropriateness, interpretation and cost, as well as to the quality culture of such organisations.”
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