Management quality assurance system in education: The experience of Malaysian schools

• Main Author: Abdul Ghani, Abdul Wahab
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: LC Special aspects of education
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/2887/1/paper9wahab.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/2887/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

This study seeks to document the experience of five Malaysian government secondary schools which had been awarded the prestigious quality assurance management system MS ISO 9002:1984 certificate between the years 1998 and 2001. Several factors were found to have contributed to the successful certification effort of these schools. Prominent among these were leadership of school principals, dedication of a core group of teachers and the assistance rendered by external consultants as well as local education authorities. The scope of MS ISO 9002 certification in all the schools did give focus to the core business of schooling i.e. teaching and learning. However, teachers were unhappy of the new system because of the increase in workload, especially with respect to record keeping. It was found that management tended to emphasise more on adherence to work procedures and instructions rather than on continual improvements and corrective actions. On the plus side, it was found that the schools did put in greater effort towards developing a more effective system of monitoring classroom teaching and learning activities. The study finds that teachers in general were rather ambivalent of the benefits of the quality system. Many agree that there is greater sense of work orderliness with the new system. However many expressed reservations on the efficacy of the system in contributing to improvement in pupils’ academic performance. In fact indications were that at the early stages of document preparation or later, during the internal audit examinations, teaching and related activities tended to be given low priority. Teachers in general, were nonplussed at the prospects of ISO certification extension. At the time of the study, a new set of ISO standards namely the MS ISO 9001:2000 came into existence. None of the schools were however, making any effort to prepare for the changeover. In fact, one school had already officially abandoned the system.