QUALITY IN EDUCATION IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY

Knowledge has the greatest value, the most human contribution, the greatest relevance to decision processes and actions and the greatest impact on specific situations or contexts. In an organizational context, all new knowledge comes from people. Some knowledge is included in organizational processes, structures and technologies. Recently, knowledge management was remitted to the domain of organizations whose primary business was to sell knowledge-based goods and products. Now, it is rapidly becoming an integral business function for many organizations as they realize that competitivity is based on effective management of intellect al resources. We recognize school, education and learning as central subjects involved in present and future society development. If we are considering a quality transformation in Romanian education, several factors should be reminded: total quality management, equity, efficiency. These represent the three pillars of school reformation in Europe and around the world. Romania has already started the process of alignment to the European laws and rules in the domain of education. As a result, the educational organization has developed strategic systems in order to accumulate organizational performance, quality and competitivity. We aim to emphasize, in the methodological part, the features of primary and secondary educational systems in Romania, from the quality management point of view, and the possible improvements that can be made.