Should ISO standards be applied to education?
Education is a process which is supposed to respect the diversity and uniqueness of individuals and connecting learning with quality of life. The uniformity provided by standisation certificates is unsuitable for it.
NOWADAYS, MANY educational institutions are going for the quality certification from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). The ISO is a federation of national bodies of various countries which deal with the quality issues related to products and services.
ISO 9000 series are the quality standards related to management aspects of an organisation. They deal with issues of quality assurance and quality systems put in place to run it. When a particular institution seeks for quality registration and certification with the ISO, they are required to do the following tasks:
- Developing a quality manual for quality assurance
- Documenting various procedures and processes including the organisational review and audit
- Hiring an accredited registrar to examine the quality documents for internal validation
- Applying for ISO registration with the documents and waiting for the registration number
- Doing an internal review or audit to assess the present status of procedures and processes, making an improvement plan and executing it
- Organising external periodic reviews for corrections to maintain the standards and preserve the registration
Education, on the other hand, is a complex man making process that is supposed to respect diversity and uniqueness of individuals. Therefore, a standardisation process that seeks for uniformity and similarity is utterly unsuitable for it.
ISO 9000 series only deals with the managerial processes, systems and products and is not an all pervasive system to ensure the quality in education. Even quality education seeks to address the issue of respecting the uniqueness of every learner and connecting learning with the quality of life; a process requiring a lot of creativity, flexibility and continued capacity building. A mere organisational certification cannot ensure this.
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