Education Excellence
This article first appeared in the October 2008 issue of Qualityworld-UK, the official magazine of the Chartered Quality Institute www.thecqi.org
It is not just the quantity but the quality of education that leads a country to rapid industrial and economic growth. In other words, it is not just about the ‘output’ of schools, colleges and universities, but about the ‘outcome’. We might say the number of graduating students is the output, while the quality of the graduates is the outcome.
Quality assurance is an important discipline for academics, planners and governments to try to ensure appropriate outcomes from educational institutions and it should be carried out at two levels. The first is external quality assurance (accreditation) carried out by regulatory/professional bodies at the national/provincial level. This is to ensure the minimum performance level of educational programs and institutions and needs to be independent and unbiased. The other level, internal quality assurance, is an integral part of an institution’s administration and management systems. In many Asian countries, the quality of education is managed effectively only in certain institutions, while not being addressed properly in many others. This also occurs at national level and, as a result, quality assurance in education is a mixed phenomenon.
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