"The ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) was set up to certify standards for industries," Chainarong Monthienvichienchai, director of the St John's group of schools, said. 

"It was not designed for education services. It does not serve any goal which really improves education." 

Many schools in Bangkok and elsewhere were seeking certificates for ISO 14001, an environmental standard, and ISO 9002, a service standard. 

"They are wasting their money," Mr Chainarong said. "Each school can improve its own education standards without having to depend on ISO. Criteria for education standards are available at the departments that govern their schools." 

Charuayporn Thoranin, secretary-general of the Office of the Private Education Commission, said it cost each school from 500,000 baht to a million baht to achieve ISO certification. The money would be spent on consultants, paperwork and an evaluation company. She attributed the ISO fever to the new National Education Act, which requires the 40,000 schools nationwide to meet a recognised standard for education services in five years. 

"An education standard means not only environmental and service management, but also the quality of teaching," Mrs Charuayporn said. 

The Private Education Commission had drawn up a quality assurance standard, and it was free. 

"Our quality assurance certification covers more educational factors than ISO does. They range from the philosophy of education to teaching methods and research, parental satisfaction and benefits to students," she said. 

Seventeen well-known schools under the jurisdiction of the Department of General Education have obtained ISO certificates. They include Satriwithaya, Samsen Withayalai and Wat Benjamabopit schools, according to Suwat Ngerncham, a former director-general of the department. 

"The certification does not serve the educational sector. An industrial standard should not be applied to teaching. Students cannot be produced to a single standard, like factory products," he said. 

The ISO approach by schools paid too much attention to paperwork instead of looking at the quality of teaching. 

"It's a business. Consultant firms and evaluation companies are involved and promote their ISO plans at schools. 

"They were brought to schools under the Department of General Education because of their personal connections with some seniors at the department. The costs are passed on to parents," Mr Suwat said. 

Prasopsri Temiyabut, director of the Chalermkhwan Satri School in Phitsanulok, said the school had an ISO 14001 certificate and was seeking an ISO 9002. The school asked parents to help pay for ISO, "but on a voluntary basis", she said. "Parents' contributions were generally 100 to 1,000 baht each, although someone donated as much as 10,000 baht," she said. Mrs Prasopsri said students definitely benefit. ISO certification prompted the school to teach environmental awareness in students and to systematically develop its administrative and academic services. 

"It's a kind of investment. ISO is a concrete kind of standardisation. Other kinds fail to inspire school staff to join forces to improve the school."

Teachers and staff are loaded with a lot of paperwork and tedious procedures, taking much necessary time away from teaching preparations and improvements, which cannot be accounted for in the ISO standardisation process.

The learning process cannot be treated as an assembly line process in which teachers are filling up students' heads with intellectual subjects with the expectation that at the final stage each student will graduate uniformly with a standardised "thinking head".

This is inhumane and corrupts the whole philosophy of education that treats knowledge and learning as a dynamic process, not a fixed and uniform one for every student.

Second, it is so sad that the ISO has misled people into the belief that ISO goes hand in hand with quality. This is not true. The ISO ensures only the standardisation of process, not quality of products. If we are manufacturing a low quality product, we can still get an ISO certificate too, if we are willing to commit to the ISO procedure to produce that poor product under a systematic process. This tells us why many high quality products have no need of the ISO certification; but vice versa, those lesser-known quality products are eagerly seeking the ISO emblem. It can apply very well to schools and universities as well.

Third, those evaluators who are in charge of evaluating the ISO process are not familiar with the education process. Neither are they experts to fully understand the educational environment such as subject content, academic qualifications, or curricula, which are the core of education quality.

This lack of understanding makes it difficult for them to go through the whole educating process evaluation, starting from the students' entry to the end of graduation, class attendance, course arrangements, teacher appointments, etc.

Finally, we will pay expensively for this misconception by our education policy requiring schools and universities to meet education quality without any clear-cut guidelines of education quality measurements.

More schools and universities will certainly rush to get the ISO certification as their proof of quality and for marketing purposes to compete with each other to attract students.

Anyone who is responsible for this policy should come out to clarify the matter to prevent public confusion and misconception about the ISO approach to education quality.

Please stop the waste now by foolishly paying for a piece of certificate that adds nothing to students' intellectual capability. Instead, we can spend money wisely by acquiring more books, more computers and raising teachers' salaries. If the ISO approach to education quality were so effective, why are the best schools around the world running without it?