There are some major premises underlying which comprise of the following:
(1) Focus on Organizational Mission:
Quality implies consistent efforts towards achievement of an organization’s mission. The mission of an institution is its basic purpose and reason for existence. The mission of an institution should be articulated in a mission statement, understood by all the teachers, valued by them and used consistently to guide all plans, goals and actions. For example, the mission of a women’s college could be ‘Empowerment of Women’.
(2) Continuous Improvement:
It is based on the premise that every plan, effort, process can be made better. Continuous improvement, as opposed to arbitrary problem-solving, requires a strong commitment to critical thinking and innovations, openness and flexibility. In fact, the survival of an institution depends upon the dynamic process of QI.
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(3) Student Orientation:
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Quality implies fulfilling and exceeding the expectations of students in particular and the larger society in general. For this, it is important to understand the needs of students and the larger society.
(4) Leadership Commitment:
In order to make QI efforts successful, managerial commitment is essential. This commitment is in terms of emphasis on the value and importance of quality, allocation of resources and support for quality and building commitment among all the staff members towards quality.
Building consensus among organizational members and deciding the strategy for is a time-consuming and complex process requiring regular attention and involvement of the educational manager.
(5) Empowerment:
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QI is based on the assumption that the people involved in the teaching-learning process know their work and students’ needs better than anyone else. Empowerment, here, is helping teachers to use their personal, professional or situational powers that they possess. This requires an attitude that teachers are an organization’s greates resource.
Teachers’ participation in QI process is in the form of goal setting, decision-making, problem-solving and participating in the process of change. This is aimed at enhancing the quality of education, improving results of the school/college and inducing higher levels of job satisfaction among teachers.
(6) Collaboration:
QI programmes should make use of collaborative teams including members from different departments, subjects, levels etc. so as to utilize diverse viewpoints, knowledge and skills of such people.
(7) Focus on Processes:
Usually, failures in quality are the result of faulty processes rather than faulty human beings. Processes are a set of actions carried out to achieve predetermined results. Examples of processes in education include teaching-learning, evaluation, planning, feedback on performance, guiding and counseling students and so on.
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For quality to improve, we must stop blaming people and study and change the processes. Processes are generally complex and are linked to proceeding and following actions, i.e., processes are linked to inputs (preceding actions) and outputs (following actions) of an institution.
For enhancing the quality of processes, it is necessary to ensure the consistency, validity, reliability, usability and cost-effectiveness of the processes.
(8) Focus on Data and Statistical Thinking:
According to Deming, data are essential to identify and describe processes and their level of effectiveness as well as variations in the processes. Besides, data must be consistent and understood in their proper context so as to be useful. However, quality does not depend only on statistical data.
For improving quality, data are required about the number of students, their characteristics, needs and problems, teacher quality, existing processes and their effectiveness, results / outcomes of the institution etc.