A New Approach to Quality in
Hungarian Sschool Education

With the kind permission of the Ministry of Education, Hungary

THE COMENIUS 2000 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME
FOR SCHOOL EDUCATION

Background
Education in Hungary faces significant changes nowadays. In 1998 the Ministry of Education elaborated - as one of the main priorities - its education policy of quality improvement, and in 1999 the Hungarian Parliament amended the Act on School Education in order to improve the quality of education and to guarantee its standards.

In Hungary in the late 80s, school inspection that used to provide an external evaluation system for public education institutions was terminated. With this, the institutional inspection culture based on the traditional, central expectations of the state was fundamentally changed.

The diversity of the institutions and the fact that local demands (of the students, parents, maintainers, and those of the local community, region, and the society in a wider sense) have come to the forefront, do not allow for the restoration of a central inspection system governed by the state. It is for that reason that the Education Government gives priority to and supports the institution-level quality improvement activity, and wishes to realise this by the implementation of the COMENIUS 2000 Quality Improvement Programme for School Education. The objectives of the Programme are efficient inspection, the evaluation and continuous improvement of the professional work by focusing on the demands and satisfaction of the direct and indirect partners belonging to the institutions' environment.

Quality in Focus
Raising quality improvement to the level of the fundamental goals of the Government's education policy is a significant step for the development of education in Hungary. It is a task of priority for the Minister of Education to provide the opportunity for each small child and pupil to participate in quality education. The future position and role of Hungary in the new, continuously enlarging Europe will decisively depend on the quality of education, too.

The quality improvement policy of the Ministry of Education is based on three pillars, namely: (1) strengthening the role of the state with respect to financing (increasing the ratio of state funding to local funding from the former 60% to at least 85%), (2) the regulation of the content of the curriculum by frame curricula, (3) developing the national system of assessment and evaluation.

The Ministry of Education - through its education policy of quality improvement - wishes to create a stimulating environment, which helps the public education institutions to focus their work on the needs and expectations of their partners. As one of the possible tools promoting the realisation of this aim, the Ministry developed and launched the COMENIUS 2000 Quality Improvement Programme for School Education. In May 2000 the implementation of the pilot project was started with the participation of 464 public education institutions (according to the structure of the Hungarian education system these are nursery schools, primary schools and secondary schools [including schools of vocational secondary education/ and student hostels) that are provided with state subsidy to implement their quality management systems.

Strategic objectives of the COMENIUS 2000 Programme

On Institutional level the Programme aims at:

• creating a competitive environment and competitive organisations for public education which can react to the challenges, the changing demands and expectations of the partners through the implementation of the COMENIUS 2000 institutional models I, II and III (see below),
• improving the quality of the educational environment and conditions with the objective to define what makes a school a school, and what makes a nursery a nursery, by means of developing human resources (in-service teacher training) and improving the internal operation of public education institutions.

The Programme also helps the maintainers of public education institutions (in Hungary more than 90% of these belong to local governments) in generating consensus on the basis of an ongoing dialogue with partners, operating a quality-oriented system of financing in education and in implementing their own quality management systems.

Principles of the COMENIUS 2000 Programme
During the implementation of the quality improvement programme the Ministry of Education considers the continuous dialogue and the broad consensus as well as the openness towards the opinion of the stakeholders (partners) in education to be the most important values. The practice of quality improvement can only be spread by a "step by step" approach, with the help of a long-term promotion and support programme, a set of professionally well founded instruments, competitions for grants, a pool of experts of broad professional background and experience, and a political consensus overlapping the cycles of governments. The voluntary participation and tolerant approach, considering the differences in the type and the culture of the institutions are also fundamental conditions in spreading the culture of quality improvement.

Vision of the COMENIUS 2000 Programme on institutional level
When planning a quality improvement programme, we have to know what kind of a new quality we wish to create in the practice of school education, and what kind of quality management and quality improvement approaches, methods and techniques would suit it the best. For this purpose the Ministry of Education has summarised the most important characteristics of the institutional operation to be achieved in the perspective of 10-15 years. According to this the institution will:

• incorporate the basic cycles of quality assurance into their daily work/operation,
• set their aims on the basis of partners' needs and demands,
• be able to control their processes, and
• improve their activities on the basis of regular self-assessment, external evaluations and surveying partners' satisfaction.

Structure of the COMENIUS 2000 Programme
Quality improvement is in the interest of all the participants within school education. It is important both for the state and the maintainers, who decide upon the allocation and utilisation of public funds. It is similarly important for the teachers who can get professional assistance in carrying out their every-day work and keeping it improved. Education institutions opening up in this way, also let the parents get acquainted with the performance of the nurseries, schools and student hostels, and spell out their demands.

None of the organisations functions perfectly. The difference is that while an organisation tries to forget about mistakes, another strives to correct them and, like a pearl shell, makes virtue out of the fault. This is why the shell is taken as the symbol modelling the COMENIUS 2000 Quality Improvement Programme for School Education.

Figure 1

The COMENIUS 2000 Quality Improvement Programme for School Education consists of two main fields (institutional and maintainer's) with three models in each field (see Figure 1). The fact that the models are built on each other provides the opportunity for the gradual (step by step) progress with quality improvement both for the institutions and their maintainers. It is important to note also that the institutional and the maintainer's fields have shared parts as well.

Table 1 below shows that the objectives of the institutional and maintainer's models at each level are very much in line with each other.

Table 1

On the institutional level the implementation of the three models is possible and recommended.
On the maintainer's level the application of the first model is recommended for all organisations, maintainers. The second and third models are recommended primarily for the maintainers with a large network of institutions.

COMENIUS 2000 Institutional Models
The COMENIUS 2000 institutional models are based on the existing national and international expertise and professional experiences gained in the field of quality management and quality improvement, but also apply a set of requirements and instruments corresponding exclusively to the specific nature and needs of education and teaching.
Figure 2 shows that the COMENIUS 2000 Model stands on the level of sector-specific approaches in the pyramid of the different quality management approaches.

Figure 2

The COMENIUS 2000 institutional models are open towards the various systems/approaches of quality management. They offer an opportunity to implement systems based on the quality award models (such as Malcolm Baldrige, the EFQM Excellence Model etc.), the ISO 9000 standard or the TQM approaches, but they do not require any third party's certification. At the same time the models allow the use of a wide range of consultants' approaches (such as the QPSA or the 7 key processes), and they guarantee the necessary freedom for the institutions in choosing and applying the methods, which are recommended by the Ministry of Education and which best suit the specific features of the institution itself.

Figure 3 shows the structure of the COMENIUS 2000 institutional models.

Figure 3

The institutional models of the COMENIUS 2000 Quality Improvement Programme

Institutional model I - "Partner-focused operation"
Institutional model II - "Implementation of Total Quality Management"
Institutional model III - "Multiplication of the results of quality improvement"

are closely built on each other, the preceding model is a part of the following one.
The aim of Institutional Model I is to develop an organisational culture which is required for and promotes the development of the partner-focused operation. The institution should identify its partners and regularly assess their needs and demands. Based on the analysis of these demands, the institution should continuously develop and improve its own operation. In the process of continuous improvement it is the conscious and consistent implementation of the PDCA (Plan - Do - Check - Act) cycle, which offers a real help to the institution.

Figure 4 shows the logical flowchart of the COMENIUS 2000 institutional model I.

Figure 4

Institutional Model II is based on Institutional Model I. Its implementation may be successful if the institution has already met the requirements of Institutional Model I, i. e. established a partner-focused thinking and operation as a first step. The aim of Institutional Model II is to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) within the institutions of public education who have already established a partner-focused way of thinking in their organisation. For this purpose the institutions have to make significant progress in the following three areas:

• Ability to control processes: The institution should develop and introduce a documented quality management system, which covers all the processes affecting the educational and teaching activities of the institution. The results of process control should be implemented into the daily operation of the institution.
• Ability to develop organisational culture: The management of the institution should consciously develop the organisational culture by involving all staff members.
• The ability of continuous improvement: The management and staff of the institution should be able to apply the PDCA cycle continuously in every single area of the institutional operation.

The COMENIUS 2000 Institutional Model II is a mixture of different quality management approaches: it has taken over from the ISO 9000 standard series the requirement for process control and also covers the criteria of the new ISO standard. It means that in education we had already had an adapted model meeting the requirements of the new ISO standard when the field of industry still did not have anything like that.
Institutional Model II, however, goes significantly beyond the ISO requirements as it promotes not only the process of putting things into order but also the continuous improvement and development of the organisational culture which is a TQM and EFQM Excellence Model based approach.

The processes to be controlled cover 8 areas of the institutional operation.
The development of the organisational culture is mostly based on the processes describing:

• the responsibility and commitment of the management of the institution,
• the development of human resources,
• safe institution,
• education and teaching,
• measurement, analysis and corrective action.

The continuous improvement is based on the following processes:

• management of partnerships,
• provision of other resources,
• operation of the institution,
• education and teaching.

The aim of Institutional Model III is to promote mutual learning by spreading best practices and by enabling the teachers of the institutions of public education to pass on their knowledge, skills and experiences acquired in the field of quality improvement, and to support - as role-model institutions - the work of quality improvement at other institutions.

By now we have completed the development of the first (COM I) and the second (COM II) institutional models. The first model - which is a kind of an introduction to the quality-oriented way of thinking - has got the widest circle of application.

Figure 5 illustrates the most frequently used methods by schools in quality improvement.

Figure 5

1. Improved quality of pedagogical work
The results of the quality improvement activity could be used as information input to the necessary revision of the Pedagogical Programme. In a large number of institutions, the need to unify the evaluation of pupils' achievements, to change the pedagogical methods applied and the need that teachers teaching the same class should think together, came to the forefront. Instead of pursuing isolated work, a dialogue started between the different teams. As a result, the transfer of pedagogical methods became more and more extensive, teachers follow each other's work and help each other.

2. Strengthened partner-focus
The relations of the institutions with their partners have improved considerably: employees became more familiar with their own institution and with the image created by their partners about them. The assessment and survey results provided new information to assist the creation of a more appropriate opinion on the institution. Pupils are conscious of being considered as partners. The supporting staff (pedagogical assistance employees) was pleased that they were also asked about their opinion and could express their views during the identification of objectives. The involvement of employees increases motivation and commitment.

3. Improved internal operation of the institution
The development of the organisational culture has been started in all institutions. Some significant improvements are in place. The work place climate and the information flow have improved. A broader scale communication has been introduced.
The institutions have reviewed their own processes and their available documents. Besides identifying areas for improvement, assessments also produce positive confirmation.
The institutions have formulated their strategies, in most cases also assigning deadlines and allocating resources required for the implementation of these strategies.

Summary
In Hungary within the public sphere, education is a step ahead. There is no other sector with such an adapted model as the COMENIUS 2000 Quality Improvement Programme for School Education, which we are rightly proud of. The Programme promotes and raises the professionalism of the teachers' work. Its scope also covers - beyond education and teaching - the institutional operation and management, co-operation within the staff, and co-operation with the partners. Beyond highlighting the strengths, quality improvement, in essence, focuses on searching for and exploring the areas for improvement rather than hiding them.

In the international context Hungary is the first to start the realisation of such a broad quality improvement programme covering the education system as a whole. In this framework not the external evaluation is emphasised but the gradual and value-increasing improvement of quality, and the development of organisational culture within the institution based on regular self-assessment.

For more information please contact:

COMENIUS 2000 Programme Management Unit
H - 1054 Budapest, Báthori u. 10.

Phone: (+ 361) - 4733685
Fax: (+ 361) - 4733660
e-mail: comenius2000@om.hu or katalin.stadler@om.hu

or visit the web-site of the Ministry of Education:

www.om.hu
www.comenius2000.hu, English