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How Muleya Basic School in Lusaka would benefit from Total Quality Management

(TQM)
The Deming’s concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) provides guiding principles for
improving the production quality of goods and services. This concept / model was developed by
an American, W. Edwards Deming, after World War II. Even though it was developed with
manufacturing processes in mind TQM concept can be a powerful tool to use in transforming the
educational system. At first, people assumed that the model only applied to profit-making
organizations because the Deming's 14 principle guidelines did not in any way mention the
words “ learning “or “curriculum”. Nevertheless, TQM model applies to all corporations,
service organizations, universities, colleges and secondary schools. Since then, educators have
translated the Deming’s terminologies to apply to schools. For example, Principals / Head
teachers can be considered as management. Teachers are employers or managers of students.
Students are employees, and the knowledge they acquire is the product. Parents and society are
the customers. In order to exceed customer expectations, and maintain quality standards in all
aspect of its business, the school must embrace the TQM principles. In this assignment, I will
focus on principles that directly apply to Muleya primary School setting.
1. Constancy of purpose
2. Adopt a new philosophy
3. Improve every process
4. Institute training on the job
5. Institute leadership
6. Drive out fear.
7. Break down barriers among staff members
8. Avoid obsession with goals and slogans

1. Constancy of purpose
Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service with the aim to
become competitive and stay in business and provide jobs. This principle is done by top
management who are keen to adopt and develop organization goals and philosophy, mission
statement and long term views. Ensure that mission statement is clear to all involved, various
processes are analyzed and discussed on how quality management is related to the processes
2. Adopt a new philosophy

Implementation of Deming's second principle requires a rethinking of the school's mission and
priorities, with everyone in agreement. The existing methods, materials, and environments may
be replaced by new teaching and learning strategies where success of every student is the goal.
Insist on quality in everything - classroom instruction, library service, toilet cleaning and
maintenance, school campus policing, interactions within the school populous etc. To achieve
this quality, an atmosphere of cooperation as opposed to competition must be instilled.
Management must ensure that the processes put in force encourages cooperation at every level be
student to student and teacher to student. Do away with the `us versus them' attitude. Instead ask
questions like, `What can we, the administration and staff, do to make the learning experience in
this classroom better?' or `What can we, the teacher and the students, do to ensure every student
has the best opportunity to learn this material?
3. Improve every process

Improve constantly and forever on every process of planning, teaching and learning processes to
have a quality service delivery and decrease on costs. Constant improvement on systems leads to
improved quality and productivity, with reduced costs. Accept nothing is ever good enough but
analyze the processes to determine what changes can be made to make things better than before.
A continuous improvement process must be made every term –and it should continue even after
the innovation. The phrase, `if it's not broke, don't fix it,' should never apply. To help decide
where to look for things to improve, use student performance to `anchor' problems, student
critiques/ summaries of complaints, and staff inputs to suggestion boxes, etc. Also, carefully
designed questions on anonymous surveys can be very valuable, but talking directly to the
customer is still the best way to find out what the barriers are. There is a side benefit to talking
directly to the students about their problems- they appreciate it and make the `us versus them'
attitude much less likely
4. Institute training on the job.
Training for educators is needed in three areas. First, there must be training in the new teaching
and learning processes that are developed. Second, training must be provided in the use of new
assessment strategies and lastly, there must be training in the principles of the new management
system. For schools, this means providing continuous professional development activities for all
school administrators, teachers, and support staff.
5. Institute leadership
The aim of supervision should be to help people to do a better job. In schools this means
bringing everyone toward the goal of perfection. Lead teachers and students in the right direction

to help them do the best job possible. To reach up this goal management need to understand the
system and processes and generally, the performance of the school as well as the methods by
which the work is done. Lack of such approach is why many people shy away from
accountability and why many others are held accountable and even penalized for things they
cannot control.
6. Drive out fear.
A basic assumption of TQM is that people want to do their best. The focus of improvement
efforts then must be on the processes and on the outcomes, not on trying to blame individuals for
failures. If quality is absent, the fault is in the system, says Deming. It is management’s job to
encourage effective two way communication and other means to drive out fear throughout the
school so that everybody may work effectively. In schools, members of staff are often afraid to
point out problems, because they fear they may be blamed. School leaders at all levels need to
communicate that staff suggestions are valued and rewarded.
7. Break down barriers among staff members
This is done by problem solving through teamwork and combining the efforts of people from
different school areas. Personnel switches between buildings and departments must occur so that
people can learn about the problems others have. The school system must have common goals,
and its members must work as a team to solve problems, set policies, and map out new
directions.

8. Avoid obsession with goals and slogans.

According to (Dr Dheeraj, 2008) telling someone to do good is meaningless without the means
to achieve that goal. He added that management must improve the processes so that the goals can
be achieved. For instance, stating that 80% is the minimum acceptable score on an exam will not
by itself achieve that goal but Stating that goal and then provide excellent instruction, arrange
for study teams, give extra help needed, would give the students a much better chance for
success

CONCLUSIONS
TQM can be a powerful tool in the educational setting even though it was developed with
manufacturing processes in mind. The key elements to a successful implementation are:
 Continuous improvement of systems and processes
 Teamwork
 customer satisfaction
 Top management commitment to action during the implementation and afterwards.
All in all, the final result will be improved quality across all major processes and departments,
higher customer retention, higher revenue due to improved sales, and global brand recognition.
In a school set-up, there will be quality education for all that would greatly contribute to the
development of the school and the nation at large.

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