How will you incorporate the four components of managing for excellence? ... mitch

Management per se entails control and putting things into order. In management, it requires ability to do visioning, preparing, planning, implementing and evaluating. In as much as managers plan carefully and critically, implement with efficacy and evaluate thoroughly, it is expected that things will be as how it is foreseen and desired.

Managing for excellence is the ultimate role of a manager, thus, the organization could give better service and will be placed on the pedestal as stipulated in their vision. In line with managing for excellence, there are four components that need consideration and careful attention in order to really achieve “excellence”.

The first component is setting the school context for curriculum reform and innovation. For the Department of Education, since it is a very big organization with complicated structure, the heads will look at the necessary things needed for such changes. They will determine how ready the schools are for the reform. Like the proposed Enhanced K+12 Basic Education Program, before they have presented the proposal they checked first on the status of the schools if they are ready to adapt it. Another example is the reform done by schools itself to improve the curriculum. Like in our case, when our previous school head planned to have a developmental reading program, she sees to it that we have references to use for that 30-minute session everyday and checked if it is possible that we can have it 30 minutes before classes will start in the morning.

The second component is laying the ground for curriculum reform and innovation. It is the building-capacity for school implementation. In this phase, there must be advocacy or information dissemination so that the program or reform will be clearly understood before it will be implemented. The Enhanced K+12 curriculum reform is on its advocacy period wherein trainings and conferences with the communities are conducted in order to let everyone understood the urgency and necessity of the reform and its benefits. In our school, our school head made a conference to explain why we need to have such program and its benefits. With that, the school, its school head and teachers, are ready for the implementation.

The third phase is transforming the school into a learning community. This is now the implementation stage. The schools here are self-directing its school environment. Then, the fourth stage is the assessing the quality of school outcomes. Meaning, the implementation will be evaluated on how much impact it has affected to education and to what extent are the effects.

Actually, these four components is a cycle. The result of evaluation is actually a basis for modification and improvement of the program. It is not really necessary that if there are negative things that are shown in the result the program has to be changed. To really come up with better programs, it is not advisable to change them from time to time. Like the Enhanced K+12, from its name alone, it’s just an improved old curriculum which is the result of the evaluation of the old curriculum that calls for reform.