Reference to the studies mentioned in chapter 2, parents’ choice result is applicable in Lebanon as it is applicable in all countries built on several criteria:
- Leadership is the head force behind successful and chosen school, when these organizations put strategies on the long run; it is the commitment of the Top Management to lead the school to the positive reputation starting internal quality system arriving to the global leadership.
- Continual training help the staff to improve and to be involved directly in any decision taken for the benefit of the school, and this reflects the image of the school and shows to parents good confidence of the teamwork, especially when meeting teachers regularly with a preset plan to treat any misunderstanding and avoid any problems.
- School Deming loop PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) protects it from gaps and mistakes done before and ensure the effectiveness of the system using the preventive and corrective actions.
- School improvement using the new technologies for example (IPads instead of books, following new technologies – concerned about students’ health – no more heavy bags that spoil students back and contribute to health problems), this will open the way to improve of the curriculum.
Furthermore, it is not only the curriculum or the student’s success that influence parents’ choice, the reputation that may influence parents’ selection is the result of the following two facts:
- The word of mouth is a greater marketing, when parents are satisfied, they will convince their friends and relatives to put their children in the specific school.
- This increasing number of admission leads to student retention, the school objective will be subsequently to maintain and increase the number of students.
As mentioned, not only the curriculum or the success rate of students that leads to school success and to parents school choice “public or private” but as we have revealed in studies done in chapter 2 that public school have one and only objective which is the students success in official exams without taking into consideration other factors as create leader students, build cultured students, generate successful curriculum, form efficient education system, taking into consideration parents’ needs, teachers continual improvement and students success in addition to lead changes when necessary.
Teachers and administrators performance plays an important role in response to student’s needs, and in the direction of the external determinants… since there must be a link between school climate and students outcome, the best performance is to be methodical but not stiff, to be arranged without being cruel.
Both private and public schools are obliged to follow a specific curriculum, because their students are obliged to be admitted to official exams to get their diploma’s that allows them to be admitted in universities. Some private schools, for example, have a specific branch that called “IB” or international baccalaureate for Lebanese students who hold European nationality, this branch facilitate for students the higher study outside the country, but this option doesn’t exist in public schools so it doesn’t meet parents satisfaction sometimes.
Qualified training agencies may contribute in school development giving the school the opportunity of profiting from the professionalism of the trainers and their experience to support the implementation of the Quality Management System.
Training and development plans are to be delivered to the training agency, and to be evaluated and measured as it goes noting that training providers and consulting agencies for schools are not much in Lebanon till now since there is only one and unique training agency called WAZNAT, that our school is dealing with.