Malaysia First: Education Ventures' CEC Kindergartens Achieve

Kuala Lumpur: Subang Jaya-based Education Ventures Sdn Bhd's Child Enrichment Centre (CEC) has become the first kindergarten in Malaysia to achieve full-site certification of conformity to the ISO 9001:2000 quality management standard.

This means that an independent auditor has verified that the quality system at Education Ventures and CEC meets the standard's requirements, which include, in particular, organisational processes in place to ensure customer satisfaction, quality delivery of educational services and continuous improvement. In the case of CEC, the "customer" is a base of approximately3.000 (4,200 in 2006) children.

The International Standards Organisation or ISO, a non-governmental organisation, is the one of the world's foremost developers of voluntary technical standards. Since it began operations in 1947, it has covered almost all sectors of business and technology, although it is best known for the ISO 9000 series, which is implemented by several hundred thousand organisations in 160 countries.

ISO itself does not carry out certification and does not award the ISO 9000 certificates. This is done independently of ISO by some 740 certification bodies globally. ISO does not control these bodies, although it does develop voluntary ISO/IEC Guides and Standards that encourage best practice and consistency in certification and related activities. Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance, an international, independent assessment and certification body is the ISO auditor for Education Ventures and CEC. United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) provided the certification stamp.

Education Ventures, which employs over 500 people, has achieved ISO 9001:2000 certification for the full range of its head office operations, kindergarten operations as well as its school operations. These services include, among others, coordination of the standards-development programme, curriculum development, administration and marketing.

"We implemented ISO 9001:2000 to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the company's business processes in order that we may provide the best educational services to our customers," group general manager of Education Ventures Ng Yee Hing said. "The decision to have our quality service system certified after an independent audit is one that was taken purely on business grounds - we wanted to be on the cutting edge, both internally as well as externally."

"That said, thousands of companies the world over have opted for certification because of the perception that an independent confirmation of ISO 9001 conformity adds value to their business," Ng added. "In the case of Education Ventures, our customers were not pushing us towards certification, but we chose to be certified to independently demonstrate to ourselves and to our clients (students and their parents) that we are quality-conscious. It is widely acknowledged that a detailed quality management system should not only exist, but also should be maintained and continually improved. At Education Ventures and CEC, our quality procedures should reflect the real and on-going needs of our business processes to produce high quality education."

"Certification to ISO 9001:2000 is not a means for us to display a certificate in the marketplace," Ng said. "Through the certification, we endeavour, as a company, to establish a solid base for on-going improvement in our operations, consistency in our customer care and service delivery and of course, a healthy bottomline. By establishing consistency in these processes we will then be in the position to provide stability, improve our services and customer satisfaction as well as reduce waste. With the proper audits in place, Education Ventures, as a company, will be able to resolve operational problems more quickly by proactively identifying, isolating and tackling the root causes, rather than reacting to the effect. This is critical in light of our need to establish a firm foundation for the management of customers' satisfaction and growth. The certification is also crucial because it increases the awareness of our staff in company requirements and activities. It also provides a solid platform to continuously train our teachers and staff to provide all our valued customers (in our case, students) with a superior educational experience."

Education Ventures, which commenced business in Malaysia in 1986 is a total education service provider. It currently operates a network of 33 kindergartens, 3 local primary and secondary schools, 1 foreign school based in China, 1 international school, and as well as an art and design college.