CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS: A PRIMER

ERICA B. DIMATULAC

Have you ever experienced problems in your school that seemed perpetual like the difficulties in managing the school registration process and the increasing number of students who stop schooling as they process in their grade level? The schools conduct days of planning before the start of the school year but these plans seem mere drawings on piles of papers that appear on not having any further fruition in the end.

This is a reality that the Department of Education (DepEd) is aware of for so much time. Even if the preparations of School Improvement Plans (SIP) are done properly, problems happen repetitiously. Having this realized, DepEd coordinated with the Australian Government through the Philippines Australian Human Resource and Organizational Development Facility (PAHRODF) that led to the introduction of the Continuous Improvement (CI) methodology.

The CI Methodology becomes a tool for the preparation of the Continuous Improvement Programs (CIP) that in turn brings an aid to an improved SIP. The CI Methodology caters concerns regarding the difficulties of schools in planning and implementing their projects from the SIP. These difficulties could be, but not limited to, difficulty in selecting improvement projects directly related to the school priority objectives, failure to properly scope projects, lack of understanding of what process to improve, no clear process power, and lack of proper stakeholder management.

The adaptation of the CI Methodology served as a tool in undertaking SIP. In a nutshell, it is a tool that determines the root causes of the problems that in turn were used in addressing them effectively. This methodology is composed of the triple-A step-by-step approach in solving a problem: access, analyze, and act.

Diving into the methodology itself, assessment enables the school heads to determine the problems and their root causes. The full understanding of the problem is an initial important concern that should be addressed. The learners and the involved stakeholders should be talk to very closely to gather relevant data. In this first stage, the skill of documenting the process should be done carefully. In the process, the school head may use the Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Stakeholder (SIPOC) scheme.

Having data relevant to unleashing the problems posited will not be enough unless otherwise these were analyzed. In the analysis stage, the school head dig into the gathered data to determine the root causes. In the stage, tools such as the Fishbone Diagram and the Root Cause Analysis will be very helpful. Once the root causes were determined, the school head may use the results as bases in addressing the problems. However, this stage is so critical that the first stage must be taken very carefully because obviously, incorrect data will lead to incorrect analyses which will further lead to inappropriate actions.

The prepared programs and activities which were derived based from the determined root causes of the problems now serve as the school’s Continuous Improvement Program. While these are carefully laid out on papers, all these are useless not unless proven effective by acting on them. The implementation of the programs and activities sought is so important that this truly validates the entire CI process. Should there be any case where the implemented CIP is not effective, there must be somewhere in the process that went wrong. Regarding concerns like this, the school head may opt to repeat the entire process just to solve the problems.

There are countless problems in any educational institutions across all levels. While there are countless of them, there are also countless ways to solve them. These ways may be easy or complex, effective or not. But with well prepared and implemented CIPs, schools may have great potentialities of improvements ahead. — oOo—

The author is Teacher II at Bical High School, Dau Mabalacat City, Pampanga