Quality Assurance in Education

Quality, whether it is in business or education, remains the most important attribute that creates value about the product/service for the receiver. It is also the means by which business/educational providers differentiate themselves from their competitors. Adapting relevant strategies would help educational institutions in creating higher standards of quality in education.

What is quality in education mean whether it is general education or tertiary or vocational education or higher university education? How we measure and assure the quality of education offered by an institution to say the institution is offering quality education?

The concept of “quality” is elusive, because it expresses a relative, though, noticeable difference between one thing and another. There is a need to understand the different concepts which predominates in education and are used to ensure quality.

Does this mean quality of facilities?

Does this mean quality of resources?

Does this mean quality of teachers?

Does this mean quality of teaching process?

Does this mean quality of curriculum and content?

Does this mean quality of management and governance?

Does this mean complying with standards or regulation established by government or regulatory body or certification body?

To understand quality and quality assurance in education and training, it is clearly important to start by defining the quality

QUALITY

Quality in education is an ongoing process ensuring the delivery of agreed standards to achieve agreed learning outcomes as a result.

As per Juran, quality is ‘fitness for purpose’, whereas Crosby defines quality as ‘conformance to requirements’.

Harvey and Green (1993) identify five categories or ways of thinking about quality.

• Exception: distinctive, embodies in excellence, passing a minimum set of standards.
• ?Perfection: zero defects, getting things right the first time (focus on process as opposed to inputs and outputs).
• ?Fitness for purpose: relates quality to a purpose, defined by the provider.
• ?Value for money: a focus on efficiency and effectiveness, measuring outputs against inputs. A populist notion of quality (government).
• ?Transformation: a qualitative change; education is about doing something to the student as opposed to something for the consumer. Includes concepts of enhancing and empowering: democratisation of the process, not just outcomes.

Later Watty (2003) suggested that the dimension of quality as perfection can be removed, since education does not aim to produce defect-free graduates.

Next question comes who is responsible for quality of education?

Is quality the responsibility of the educational institution?

Is quality the responsibility of independent quality assurance or certification bodies?

Is quality responsibility of Government??

First and the foremost, quality is the responsibility of educational institution itself. They need to ensure quality of education delivered. Government bodies often play an important role in the quality assurance of education. Usually government is either directly involved in controlling quality of education through various mechanism or approves external agencies to manage the quality of educational institutions, educational standards and provision.

There are different approaches to ensure the quality. In a recent approach, specially in public sector, quality assurance is being used as watchdog approach, relying on government controls, professional credentials, internal audits, and external inspections to maintain standards, weed out poor performers, and solve problems.

Key methods/approaches to ensure the quality of education are:

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL QUALITY ASSURANCE

Quality assurance is a process by which an institution can guarantee with confidence and certainty, that the standards and quality of its educational provision are being maintained and enhanced. Quality Assurance is a condition that leads to the achievement of transparency.

As per Vroeijenstijn, quality assurance is a structured and continuous attention to quality in terms of quality maintenance and improvement. Achieving improvement requires an acknowledgement by educational providers of a need to improve, an understanding of the appropriate focus of improvement, knowledge of the means of achieving the objectives of improvement and an appreciation of the benefits that will accrue from the effort.

It is suggested that without intrinsic motivation to improve quality, the best that can be hoped for is compliance with external requirements.?Compliance may pass for improvement in the short term, but as soon as the need to display ‘improvement’ has passed, old habits are likely to re-emerge (Middlehurst and Woodhouse, 1995). Askling (1997) also highlights the essential role of internal quality assurance as sustainable approach for improving/enhancing the quality of education.

External quality assurance done by third person ensures integrity and acts as catalyst in improving the quality of education, thus helping institution with its accountability to ensure quality of education.

Harvey (2002) argued that it is essential to have both the approaches internal and external quality assurance to ensure continuous and lasting improvements.

QUALITY CONTROL

Quality control refers to the internal verification procedures (both formal and informal) used by educational institutions in order to monitor quality and standards of education delivery to a satisfactory standard and as intended.

QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Quality Assessment is the process of external evaluation undertaken by an external body of the quality of educational provisions in institutions, in particular the quality of the student experience.

QUALITY AUDIT

Quality Audit is the process of examining institutional procedures for assuring quality and standards to check if the arrangements are implemented effectively and achieve stated objectives. Quality audit also checks if the quality of education (teaching/training) provided enables students to attain standards and the assessments are conducted at the right level of the standards. It further checks if the institutions are effectively discharging their responsibilities for the standards of awards granted in their name or in the name of their certification body.

STANDARDS

Standards describe levels of attainment against which performance may be measured. Attainment of a standard usually implies a measure of fitness for a defined purpose.

QUALITY CULTURE

Quality Culture is the adoption of quality as an overarching principle in every operation of educational institution to ensure quality education is delivered. Quality Culture marks a move away form periodic assessment to ingrained quality assurance.

QUALITY ENHANCEMENT

Quality Enhancement is the process of positively changing activities in order to provide for a continuous improvement in the quality of institutional provision.

ACCREDITATION

Accreditation is the result of a review of an education program or institution following certain quality standards agreed on beforehand. It’s a kind of recognition that a program or institution fulfils certain standards. Accreditation could be in the form of approval from government authority to deliver certain programmes.

There is a wide variety of Quality Assurance Agencies (QAA) worldwide involved with quality of education. There is currently little uniformity or harmonisation of quality assurance agencies and their procedures. Indeed many countries, regions and cultures are developing their own approaches to quality assurance in education. Some agencies are state-driven; others are private, with many intermediate forms.