Students Quality Circle (SQC)

-Babu Ram Banjade
SQC is the philosophy adopted from the total quality management. It is a small group of volunteer students of the similar age group that meets regularly for about one hour per week to identify, analyze and solve problems for their self and mutual development. In Nepal, a non-political educational organization was set up about three years back and it has been conducting trainings and workshops on various extra-curricular activities and case study. Through this organization, Students Quality Circles are formed in the educational institutions and the students work out their problems. Students’ Quality Circle utilizes the philosophy of total quality management in identifying and solving the problems.
Quality Control Circle (QCC) was first initiated in Japan to empower employees in 1962.The philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM) with QCC as an integral component developed and spread to the Western world in the early 1980s.TQM has always been in the domain of science, engineering and management. However, in the recent years, it has also been experimented and practiced even in the classrooms. This concept entered the educational institutions when a group of small children of an Indian school presented a QCC case at the international conference on QCC. This encouraged the educationists to adopt the philosophy in order to enhance the personality of students. This philosophy is an approach to create a Total Quality Person (TQP). Since 1997, international conventions are being held every year in different countries. Nepal first organized its National Convention on SQC in 2005. Its third convention was organized at Little Angels School, Hattiban, Lalitpur in November 2007.
The credit for bringing the TQM concept of customer delight, production and economic development in the business organizations and society delight etc. into the educational institutions from Japan goes to Mr. Jagadish Gandhi, who established City Montessori School with only 5 students at the beginning in Lucknow, India. His school has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest number of students (more than 30,000) in a single city. Mr. Gandhi after visiting Japan in 1992 and talking to the managers and employees in different industries concluded that if quality circle activities are instrumental in the development of industries, they should work in the educational institutes as well. Thus, he is called the first person to introduce this philosophy in Indian academics.

Do We All Need SQC?
TQM has been a guiding philosophy for many educational institutes in Nepal and abroad. Producing a total quality person is a challenge in deed. However, when the students find out their problems by themselves and endeavour to solve them in a group, their learning becomes permanent. SQC emphasizes on continuous improvement through imagination and discovery for the betterment of future. So, SQC works on the problem solving philosophy as practiced in Total Quality Management; hence, its need today can not be ignored in any educational institutes.


What do the SQC members do?Students exercise in problem solving through SQC activities in a continuous basis and develop their leadership personality. They go through certain steps of problem solving process. They first select a topic that includes the problem faced by a number of students. Secondly, they set a target. It means they strive towards knowing the situation of the problem. This step quantifies the problem. Thirdly, they make plans for solving the problem. They decide the activities, schedule, and allocate responsibilities to the members. In the fourth step, the SQC members analyze the root cause of the problem by listing out possible sub-causes. Then, in the fifth step, the SQC members proceed to implement the identified countermeasures. Now, they start solving the problem. Sixthly, they check the result after implementing the plan for countermeasures. If the results after implementing the countermeasures are found close to the target, the SQC members document the experience of the problem solving exercise. Finally, SQC plans to educate and disseminate, after a successful study of the problem and finding its solution, their knowledge and experience to all the students and the institute as well