ISO 21001

What is ISO 21001?

ISO 21001 is a quality management system that aims to standardise education management to ensure it meets learners’ needs. It’s intended to help schools, colleges, training providers and other educational organisations implement best practice. It is based on the widely followed ISO 9001 quality management systems.

Around the world, education quality varies significantly. This means that in some cases, learners are not receiving the best level of education available. As an Educational Organisation Management System (EOMS), ISO 21001 attempts to address this problem. To do so, it emphasises several concepts related to education management best practice:

• Education quality depends on trained facilitators/teachers
• A learner-centric approach is valued
• Good resources and facilities are provided
• Curriculum and material is relevant to learners
• Family and societal support is offered
• Gender-sensitive design is incorporated
• A safe and conducive learning environment

The standard aims to help educational establishments improve quality by incorporating these concepts and objectives into their teaching and training methods.

ISO 21001 also recognises that technology is revolutionising every facet of the education system, from streamlining homework assignments and marking to giving special needs students more personalised support.

Why is ISO 21001 certification important?

ISO 21001 certification is intended to ensure that education providers are offering the highest quality instruction available to learners. In the coming years, ISO 21001 will be increasingly recognised as an independent measure of an education provider’s quality. Therefore, any organisation that offers teaching and training will benefit from having their education management assessed against the standard.

Benefits of the ISO 21001 EOMS include:

• ISO 21001 certification empowers you to deliver more effective and efficient educational services, offering a customised experience to every learner, while supporting people with special educational needs.
• ISO 21001 helps educational organisations to ensure that learners receive the desired quality of education, while improving the learner’s productivity, safety and wellbeing.
• Enhance competitiveness and credibility – by implementing an effective EOMS, which complements a learner-centric approach.
• Sustainable growth – a powerful EOMS addresses the education sector’s key challenges, leaving you better positioned to appraise and realise new opportunities.
• Enhance brand reputation – an internationally recognised certificate from TÜV SÜD promotes your brand image and improves company morale.

TÜV SÜD is an accredited certification body for ISO 21001

TÜV SÜD is an international certification body with extensive experience accrediting organisations to quality management standards like ISO 9001. Our highly experienced auditors have an in-depth understanding of EOMS like ISO 21001 and understand how to apply them in a wide variety of educational settings. You can rest assured that we conduct certifications with the highest degree of professionalism and conformance to international guidelines.

Our global network enables us to offer ISO 21001 certification and auditor engagement services around the world, certifying organisations’ compliance to this EOMS at a global scale.

Furthermore, TÜV SÜD’s experts actively participate in international standardisation committees and have a complete understanding of the latest regulatory developments. And, because TÜV SÜD is vendor agnostic, our third-party audits are both impartial and independent, helping your organisation to gain valuable insights from an unbiased expert.

TÜV SÜD’s ISO 21001 certification process

Before you can initiate the certification process, your organisation will need to implement an Educational Organisations Management Systems assessment according to ISO 21001 requirements. All stages in this process must be thoroughly documented.

For the certification process itself, we work with you to implement the following steps:

• Documentation review audit: TÜV SÜD evaluates your documentation and company records
• On-site audit: our experts review the compliance of your actual activities to ISO 21001 requirements and company records
• Close the gap: your organisation identifies and implements measures to correct the root cause of any non-conformances identified by the audit
• Certification issuance: we issue the ISO 21001 certificate and certification mark. You can then use TÜV SÜD’s widely recognised quality assurance mark on your branding and promotional material
• Surveillance audits: An annual audit is required to maintain certification validity

To learn how your organisation can become ISO 21001 certified, or to find out more about the kinds of activities you must complete for your EOMS assessment, contact us today.