Effective School Management

BS5750 and ISO9000
BS5750 and ISO9000 are quality standards that have been adopted  by
organizations of many kinds – industry, government departments, local
authorities, retailers and hospitals. So far we have heard of only a few schools
that have adopted these standards.
The standards are set by the British Standards Institute and  the
International Standards Organization respectively. Governments, including
that of the UK, have promoted the use of these standards and many
government departments and other organizations insist that their suppliers
of goods or services should have been approved to one or other of the
standards, which are very similar except, of course, that ISO is internationally
recognized and is therefore increasingly preferred to BSI.
A  ‘standard’ is a set of requirements to which an organization must
conform in order to be given accreditation by the appropriate institute.
Essentially the requirements are that the main procedures used in the
organization are effective, well documented, known by those who use them
or are affected by them and applied in practice. A most important
requirement is that there should be a systematic review and update of the
procedures. The organization is regularly monitored to ensure that the
standards are being maintained.
The immediate objections which teachers – or any other managers – will
raise to this approach are
(1) it creates unnecessary paper and bureaucracy;
(2) to implement the standards is very time-consuming; and
(3) the fact that you have described a procedure or ‘process’ does not mean
that it will be followed.
The responses to these objections are as follows:
(1) In most schools there is already no lack of paperwork about, for example,
organizing school trips, timetabling, dealing with absenteeism,
detentions, discipline, dinner duties. The problem is often that it is
created as problems arise and then forgotten or lost until the next time
there is a problem. The procedures operating within a school can be a
source of mystery to newly appointed staff.
What the systematic approach of BS5750 or ISO9000 does is to ensure
that documentation describing the various procedures or ‘processes’ is
organized into a manual or manuals which are easily accessible, must be
updated as needed and can be referred to by established or new staff.
These manuals are excellent induction training material.

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
(2) There is no argument that the creation of or systematization of
documentation on ‘processes’ is time-consuming. This is an aspect of the
constant management dilemma that to save time and effort in the long
term you have to invest time and effort in the short term. We have
discussed this elsewhere (p. 123).
(3) It is again true that to document ‘processes’ does not mean that they will
be followed. We are indeed wasting our time unless we
(a) focus staff’s attention on the processes;
(b) train newcomers in their use;
(c)
monitor compliance; and
(d) update as necessary.