Effective School Management

part of school routine.
On a production line there would traditionally be one or more ‘quality
controllers’ or ‘checkers’ at the end of the total line and/or each process along
the line. These checkers would scan the goods being produced and/or take
samples in order to spot any defective product. If defects occurred on a fairly
infrequent basis, the offending items would simply be removed by the
checker and either scrapped or ‘reworked’. If, of course, defects suddenly
rose beyond an acceptable level, the line would be stopped in order to check
for a fault.
The TQM approach is to say that no level of product defect is ‘acceptable’.
If any defective items are being produced there is something wrong with the
process. Certainly there should be no need for ‘checkers’. Instead, every
worker and machine on the line should be ensuring that the process is being
carried out in a way that eliminates errors.
The approach is, of course, the one followed by good teachers who do not
simply correct pupils’ work but try to ensure that pupils’ understanding will
be such that they make as few errors as possible in the first place but certainly
do not frequently repeat the same error.
Carrying the principle over into school management tasks, the message is
that we should not simply ‘do’ the timetable, ‘run’ the school sports day or
‘put on’ a school play but should first think through the various steps that
will be involved, who will take them and when they will need to be taken. In
setting up this ‘process’ we will need to ‘consult’ with those who will need to
play a role (our ‘suppliers’) and communicate to them exactly what are our
expectations. We may also need to train them.
However, the most important thing of all is that having made the effort to
set up a process, we get the maximum benefit from it. When the activity
needs to be repeated by ourselves or by others we want therefore to be sure
that we
(1) do not have to reinvent the wheel; and
(2) learn from any problems that may have been encountered on previous
occasions and update the process to reduce or eliminate these problems.
When human beings have solved a problem, they are apt to be so anxious to
tackle other problems that await them that they completely forget to learn or
communicate the lessons they should have drawn from the first problem.

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MANAGING QUALITY, RISK, HEALTH AND SAFETY
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The result is that the same mistakes are repeated again and again. Clearly
defined, recorded and applied processes are the basis of the ‘standards’
discussed in the next section.