Quality Management Framework for Educational Institutions

Introduction Management is the ability to create, organize and utilize resources, economically, efficiently & effectively. Management is essential aspect of human life, both personal as well as collective. Personal management shapes effective individuals, while collective management is required for well-performing institutions. Management is either good or poor. Poor management plays a decisive role in institutional failure or ineffectiveness.

Educational institutions provide knowledge, build character and enhance wisdom level of students. They prepare students for practical life. An inefficient-ineffective educational institution will produce harmful individuals for society. There are multiple reasons of inefficiency or ineffectiveness of an educational institution such as mediocrity of teachers, irrelevancy of syllabus, ineffective headship and poor management system. However, poor management is decisive drawback of non-performing educational institutions. Poor management means - traditional management techniques by educational entrepreneurs, imitative leadership approach by academicians, micro management style by head teacher/principal, investor mindset by owners, and dictatorial approach of classroom management by teachers. There are three major areas of Quality Learning Process - Key Activities Area, Performance Area, and Relations Area. Firstly, the key activities revolve around knowledge absorption / knowledge dissemination. Generally, the key activities include learning goals, course planning, learning schedule, teaching methods, and classroom management. Secondly, the performance area concentrates on learning outcomes.

It studies learning performance of students, teaching performance of subject teachers, and managing performance of class teacher/principal. Thirdly, the relations analysis addresses multiple relations among students, teachers, parents, and educational managers. Dominantly, it deals with effective management of all learning events. The ultimate target of relation analysis is to realize synergistic outcomes from learning process. Quality Management Vs Micro Management Governance is inevitable aspect of collective life. It may adopt two courses - good & bad. Good governance is based on Quality Management while bad governance is outcome of Micro Management. Primarily, Quality Management is a system that pursues relentlessly excellence towards improvement of services offered, while Micro Management adopts cosmetic approach towards improvement. Quality management differs with micro management on countless dimensions however the prominent differences are: Quality management is modern management, while micro management is traditional management. Traditional management is very hierarchical, organized, and disciplined. It is the military style of management, so that it only works in the military or in a micro set up.

On the other hand, quality management is democratic management; it is against dominating tactics of individuals. A quality manager derives its powers from the principles she/he follows while the micro manager derives its power from the position she/he enjoys. Quality Management utilizes talent of people at all levels (learning, teaching and management) optimally, while Micro Management concentrates on talents of leader only, it is forgetful towards talents of everyone or collective talent based on healthy competition or cooperation. At institutional level, an achievement or failure is dominantly team phenomenon. The phenomenon of individualism means massive flattery of leaders / seniors. In nutshell, quality management means meritorious interaction, while micro management means massive institutional politics. Quality Management is based on humanistic philosophy. It begins with the belief that all people can be trained for the betterment of system. People want to do a good job and expect respect. The philosophy behind the approach values the self-esteem of those who teach and learn. It is Micro Management that deals with teachers/students, wrongly. The situation nurtures apathetic mindset among students/teachers. On the other hand, quality