Using standards can offer a set of powerful business and marketing tools for educational institutions of all sizes. 

You can use them to fine-tune your performance and manage the risks you face while operating in a more efficient and sustainable way; they’ll allow you to demonstrate the quality of what you do, and they help you to see how to embed best practices into your organization.

The benefits of standards to education organizations

When you’re offering an education service you need to satisfy your students' and/or partners' requirements, and that relies on delivering consistent quality time after time. 

Standards offer a set of tools to achieve consistent quality.

They do this by defining good practices for carrying out a whole range of education services and the processes and systems that underpin them. They also explain how to build a culture that encourages the delivery of high-quality services. 

That’s not all: in a complex, interconnected global economy, standards can help you work seamlessly with supply chains and educational partners, and provide assurance to those procuring services, whether in the same region or on the other side of the world. 

They do this by providing a common language and helping to define service requirements, customer expectations, and recognized terms and definitions. They also reduce the risks that might hit customers, such as data security vulnerabilities.

How standards ensure quality education services

Standards can help you plan, design, and deliver services that will work from launch. 

They help you embed reliable processes, systems, and – crucially – behaviours. The standards can take the form of specifications, guidelines, methodologies for particular tasks, and terms and definitions (which help your systems draw on global best practices).

Almost any education organization involved in delivering or procuring educational services will see value from standards designed to help embed quality processes, policies, and procedures and to help reduce risks to educators and students.

To read more on the topic of quality management within the education sector, click here.

Key standards for your education organization

There are several key standards that support educational organizations:

BS EN ISO 9001 

BS EN ISO 9001 is the internationally recognized Quality Management System (QMS) standard that can benefit any size of education organization. Designed to be a powerful business improvement tool, this standard can help your business to:

• Continually innovate, streamline operations and reduce costs

• Win more business and compete in tenders

• Satisfy more customers

• Be more resilient and build a sustainable business

• Show you have strong corporate governance

• Work effectively with stakeholders and your supply chain

BS EN ISO 45001

BS EN ISO 45001 provides a clear framework to benchmark and improve your occupational health and safety performance, as well as lay the ground for continuous improvement.

Taking a standards-based approach can help education organizations understand their responsibilities and create the right structures to efficiently manage staff and student health and safety and comply with the law. BS EN ISO 45001 also integrates seamlessly with other management systems standards, such as BS EN ISO 9001 and BS ISO 14001 (Environmental management system).

BS ISO 45003

ISO 45003 provides guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. It helps to tackle psychological health in the workplace. It supplements BS EN ISO 45001 to help education organizations implement a management system for psychological health and safety in the workplace.

With all this in place, education business owners can respond effectively to a transforming workplace culture, managing risk by promoting a safe and healthy workforce that reflects on society as a whole.

BS ISO 21001

BS ISO 21001 is primarily a standard of the management process for educational organizations. The standard is aligned to BS EN ISO 9001 and is applicable to any organization that uses a curriculum to support the development of competence through teaching, learning, or research, regardless of the type, size, or method of delivery.

This standard provides a common management tool for organizations providing educational products and services capable of meeting learners' and other customers’ requirements and needs. It focuses on the management systems of educational organizations as well as the impact of these on learners and other relevant parties.

BS EN ISO/IEC 27001 

Protecting your information assets in the Education sector has never been of greater importance, with more and more educational services being provided solely through a digital platform. Standards, such as BS ISO/IEC 23126:2021 specify a framework to describe and organize learning resources in ubiquitous learning.

The global shift to online learning has come with the need for education organizations to advance their cybersecurity processes, to protect the data of their students and educators alike. BS EN ISO/IEC 27001 helps your business do just that. 

It also helps you to continually review and refine the way you do this, not only for today but also adapt for future innovations. 

BS EN ISO 14001 

BS ISO 14001 Environmental management system (EMS) standard provides guidance on how to consider multiple aspects of your education business so that it can reduce its impact on the environment. It also drives you to evaluate how you manage emergency response, customer expectations, stakeholders, and your relationships with your local community.

Experience the benefits of standards in your education organization, by adding all the key management system standards to your collection today.

Discover BSI Knowledge

Education standards, from those covering quality management to the health & safety of students, are helping to shape the future of our educational institutions. However, knowing where to start when it comes to implementing them, or sharing their guidance with your staff and students can seem like a daunting challenge. With a BSI Knowledge subscription, you will have the flexibility and visibility to manage the key standards you need in order to enhance your education processes with confidence. Request to learn more.