QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND STANDARDS FOR EDUCATION

Abstract

In education, as in most other areas of activity, there are standards that regulate the processes that are carried on by learning institutions like universities for example. Some of these standards are in the form of governmental regulations that are mandatory for any institution that provides education services, while other standards are voluntary and are applicable to the education services that are carried on. There are also standards for quality management systems that can be used in a large variety of domains, among them being also education. There must not be confused the standards that are imposed by government regulations with the voluntary standards that are referring to the requirements applicable for products and with the voluntary standards for quality management systems. The governmental imposed standards for education must be obeyed by any learning institution if it wants to offer its services in a country, while voluntary standards for educational standards may reflect in a better quality than the minimum imposed by the laws. Voluntary standards for quality management systems used in education are situated on a different level than the standards mentioned above. The standards from this category are usually also used in other areas of activity, the quality management systems being similar in other domains. In the current paper, there will be explored the relation between these standards with an emphasis on the way in which the standards for quality management systems can be used by an educational institution in order to respond to the requirements of the specific educational standards.