Total Quality Management in Education

1. Total Quality Management in Education

2. TQM The adoption of TQM by Japanese Industry, but not by the USA, is widely credited for the former’s miraculous post-war economic reconstruction.

3. Workers Quality Control Pass Customer Raw Materials Process Fail Discard/Rework School as a Factory Traditional Quality Control System

4. Teachers Exams Primary School Leavers Further Education Training Workforce Pass Teaching Fail Resit School as a Factory

5. Traditional Quality Control System Idealization of a factory: • Raw materials enter a process operated by workers to produce a product which then passes through a quality control before dispatch to the customer. • Items which fail the quality control are either discarded or reworked.

6. Traditional Quality Control System Drawbacks: • Discarding defective items wastes the time and resources already invested in them, but • Reworking them consumes yet more time and resources.

7. TQM It focuses on the strategies of eliminating defects in a product by PREVENTION rather than by CURE.

8. Crosby Model Deming Model TQM

9. TQM Crosby’s model • Focus not on the quality of the product but on the quality of the production system you use to produce it. • Consider every component of the system and find the root causes of the failures and eliminate them at source. • The system will then produce a quality product with “zero defects”.

10. TQM Deming’s model • Mass inspection of every item may take a long time and may be inherently unreliable since there is not time to inspect each item too closely. • Quality control inspectors must be employed and paid even though they do not add value to the product.

11. TQM Deming’s model • The concept of “zero defects” is a misguided one where competition in manufacturing is concerned. The standards for zero defects is not absolute. • When the competitors produce a better product, the original standards for zero defects with become obsolete.

12. TQM Deming’s model • Therefore, the emphasis must be on continually improving the process of production to achieve even higher quality standards.

13. Better product (+) Quality Absence of defect (-) TQM

14. Quality Control in Education Idealization of a school • Students enter a school where they pass through a teaching process conducted by teachers. • The students then sit for examinations (quality control) before entering further education and training, or the workforce. • Student who fail the examination either enter the work force as unskilled workers, with a lack of academic credentials or they re-sit the subjects they have failed.

15. Teachers Exams Primary School Leavers Further Education Training Workforce Pass Teaching Fail Resit School as a Factory

16. Quality Control in Education Drawbacks: • Allowing students who fail their examinations to enter the workforce is a waste of time and money already invested in their education, but • to compel students to re-sit their examinations take even more time and money.

17. TQM in education • TQM is attracting increasing attention among schools and government agencies in UK, Canada and USA. • Educational authorities are attempting to impose quality standards through development of • strict accountability systems (e.g. QAI), • competency-based education and testing, and • mandated national curricular content and goals.

18. TQM in education Different interpretations of TQM in industry, however, may result in contrasting outcomes when it is applied in schools.

19. TQM in Education Crosby’s model • Focus on the quality of the teaching system you use to educate them. • Consider every component of the system and find the causes for examination failures and eliminate them at source. • The system will then produce students who pass their examinations automatically.

20. Improving the quality of the production system in order to produce a quality product with “zero defects” with respect to some static quality standard. A teaching and learning process which focuses exclusively on achieving good examination results. Crosby’s Interpretation

21. Crosby’s Interpretation Once teachers and students have achieved the performance standard of ‘zero defects’, what is there left to do? Complacency and Stagnation

22. TQM in Education Deming’s model • Examining every student on everything they learned takes up considerable time, thus reducing the number of class periods available for teaching. • The examination process may be unreliable since there is not time to examine each student too closely.

23. TQM in Education Deming’s model • Teachers may spend considerable amounts of time setting and marking examination scripts, even though this exercise does not contribute directly to student learning. • There is nothing absolute about educational standards.

24. TQM in Education Deming’s model • For school to compete successfully in the education market, there must be continual improvements in the curriculum itself in order better to satisfy the educational needs of the students.

25. Never-ending cycle of improvement in the system of production which results in altogether better products. Continually improving the quality of instruction in order to encourage students to become critical and creative thinkers in a fast-changing technological world. Deming’s Interpretation

26. TQM in Education Reflection What are the major obstacles to implementing the Deming Model in schools in Hong Kong?