Effective School Management

12
Managing Quality, Risk, Health and Safety
Teachers are under constant pressure to achieve more without any increase –
and often with a reduction – in resources. The euphemistic term for this is
‘productivity’.
In such circumstances, considerations of quality, health and safety in
particular can easily fall by the wayside. If they do, however, the result is
almost invariably an increase in pressure on the school and, in extreme cases,
severe disruption of school life with criminal penalties imposed on staff –
especially senior staff – and heavy compensation payments to be made by the
school. It is true that compensation claims may be met by insurers but there
are often ‘excess’ clauses and insurers, whose business is to make money, will
recover their losses eventually through increased premiums. Indeed, some
risks have become uninsurable.
Quality, health and safety all depend on developing positive attitudes in
both staff and children. Since 1999, schools have had a statutory duty to teach
risk management (QCA/HSE, 1999). All in the school need to be aware of
where risks may lie and of the disciplines needed to identify and control the
risks. Hazard-spotting and troubleshooting can be fun, and these skills will
be increasingly important in the adult life of the children we teach.
All that we have said so far is common to all elements of quality, risk,
health and safety. It is useful now to look at each in turn.
QUALITY
The concept of quality and the means to achieve it have gone through some
interesting gyrations over recent years.
The definition of quality as ‘excellence’ was replaced in the early 1980s by
‘reasonably fit for the purpose’ and since the late 1980s has swung back to be
generally accepted as ‘meeting or exceeding the expectations of the
customer’.
These swings in thinking are well illustrated by the engineering industry.
‘Murphy’s law’ – ‘If it can possibly go wrong it will and it will happen at the
worst possible time’ – was not just a cynical view of inanimate objects, but

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
was the principle which US engineers were supposed to bear in mind while
maintaining aircraft during the Second World War. They should, in fact,
repair or replace anything that could ‘possibly go wrong’. Excellence was the
name of the game.
Compare this approach with a discussion that one of your authors had in
1985 with the Quality Audit Manager (note the job title) of a major aircraft
manufacturer. The manager said that one of his problems was that the design
department prescribed the same tight tolerances in specifying all com-
ponents. In consequence these tolerances were not always respected. What
he therefore wanted the designers to do was to slacken the tolerances in cases
where they were not really necessary, so that quality audit could ensure
respect for all tolerances and in particular therefore ensure that tight
tolerances were kept on those components where there was real need.
The logic in the above example is sound, but consider the story of a
Japanese car manufacturer who built gearboxes in the UK as well as in Japan.
Those built in Japan proved more reliable. The reason, it was discovered, was
that, whereas the UK production workers aimed to create components that
fell somewhere within the specified tolerances, the Japanese constantly
aimed to produce as nearly as possible to the ideal dimension.
Since the late 1980s an increasing number of organizations worldwide
have endeavoured to practise ‘Total Quality Management’ (TQM). In so
doing they have drawn heavily on the theories, principles and practical work
of the three best-known quality ‘gurus’, Philip B. Crosby, J.M. Juran and W.
Edwards Deming. The three ‘gurus’ are not always in agreement, and the
approaches taken by organizations are far from identical. However, there is
fairly general concurrence on a number of key principles, and these
principles are just as applicable and useful to schools as they are to com-
mercial organizations, government departments, hospitals or universities.
They are as follows.