Total quality management for Maltese schools

Abstract

This essay proposes to explore some aspects of TQM principles and techniques and their application to the local system of Education. As with every innovative approach, TQM is hitting our schools piecemeal, with a trickling of exposure through various courses, seminars and meetings, especially those catering for schools administrators and education officers. The jargon of the business and manufacturing world has also been seeping through with varying depths of actual impact. On the other hand education systems and schools in other bigger and mostly more developed countries that have had experience of TQM in education have now arrived at a phase of evaluation and critique. A debate is developing as to the actual value of TQM for the process of education, and alternative routes or adaptations are being sought. The very idea of education management is being challenged and educational leadership is being put to the forefront. The initial exposure to TQM in the local education scenario is consequently a range of different perspectives and attitudes. The local context of smallness has to be taken into account. The idiosyncratic economies of small states as well as characteristic traits such as totality, monopoly and intimacy are bound to necessitate modifications of imported systems. On the other hand accountability and quality assurance are enticing and desirable. Taking stock of the present situation is as interesting as it is challenging.