Global Schools Foundation, winner of over 150 awards, is one of the leading practitioners of quality management in the field of education.

While all the present generation schools are in a competitive race, at GSF, the race for quality does not have a finishing line. The group’s vision to become global role model in education is more of a journey rather than a destination. TQM is the most important tool that helps the organisation in staying aligned with this vision.

TQM in Education

Total Quality Management (TQM) in education industry is an approach which connects every department and branch in the organisation and drive them towards the common goal of achieving quality in their specific areas of work. The purpose of TQM is to perfect each and every process involved in an educational organisation and move the entire organisation up in the value chain.

If there is value addition from every department, it will lead to the success of educational organisation at a much larger scale.

How is TQM different from quality assurance?

Quality assurance is part of every educational organisation. However, quality assurance is limited to keeping happy the primary customers, which is the parents in case of a school. Every school tries to keep the parents happy by maintaining high academic standards and the major onus of this lies on the shoulders of the academic team. In most of the schools, departments other than academics are not involved in the main goal of keeping the parents happy.

Departments like finance and operations work on short-term goals and do not have any inter-connection with each other in terms of achieving the common goal of creating a learning experience that will lead to academic success of the students.

A happy parent at GIIS Tokyo

In TQM implementing schools, like schools under GSF, this process begins with making all the departments aware of the bigger picture and seeking their equal involvement. Academics, Human Resource, Finance, Operations, all are aligned and work together and hold hands together for creating a robust learning experience and a sustainable model leading to overall success of the organisation. Each one regardless student or staff, senior or junior contributes and become a part of the same goal.

Implementing TQM is all the more relevant for GSF schools which aim at fostering 21^st century skills in students. For this the schools need to implement great facility, employ the best teachers, make education cost effective and make the overall learning experience outstanding for the students and parents. This cannot be achieved with TQM and bringing together all the departments to the level of same understanding.

TQM changes the whole culture of the school and makes the organisation excellence oriented. The tool results in an absolute face-lift of the educational organisation and the output is visible in the academic results and placement success rate of the students.

In both these aspects GSF schools are leading the way as compared to many other new schools around.