Summary:

Introduction
The Philippine Quality Award (PQA) is the highest level of national
recognition for exemplary organizational performance. The award is
given to organizations in the private and public sectors which excel in
quality and productivity. It was established to sustain socioeconomic
growth and to promote quality excellence in both sector organizations
and to provide an internationally comparable framework and criteria
for assessing organizational performance and recognizing quality
excellence. The following individuals are involved in choosing the
awardees: the President of the Philippines, Secretary of DTI, PQA
committee, Management committee, Development academy of the
Philippines, Philippine Society of Quality Control, Board of Judges and
Team of Assessors. The PQA follows a criteria in deciding who will be
the recipient of the award namely, Leadership, Strategic planning,
Student, Stakeholder and Market Focus, Measurement, Analysis and
Knowledge management, Faculty and Staff focus, Process Management
and Organizational Results. The aforementioned criteria were adapted
from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) of the
United States. Many countries adapted the same criteria for their own
excellence award.

In applying for this award the organization will gain an outside

perspective on its business/organizational performance through the
review of business experts and quality practitioners in different fields.
The result of the review outlines strengths and areas from
improvement based on the criteria. The applicants who got a high score
based on the assessment will then be the recipient of the award and
the decisions made by the committee are final and are not subject to
appeal.

The award is designed in a ladderized pattern to encourage

organizations to strive for excellence through continuous improvement.
At the bottom of the ladderized approach is the Recognition for
Commitment to Quality Management followed by Recognition for
Proficiency in Quality Management, then rising another level higher is
Recognition for Mastery in Quality Management and the highest award
in PQA is Philippine Quality Award for Performance Excellence.

The awardees are then expected to share information on their

successful performance and quality strategies with other organizations
in the Philippines.

An organization may apply for this award through submission of an

application that consists three parts namely the Eligibility
Determination Form, Completes Application Form and a Report of the
Business overview and responses to requirements to each criterion.
They may submit their application form to the contact personnel in-
charge.
Reflection:

The creation of the PQA for both private and public sector, in my
opinion, allowed space for improvement in every organization that wants
to apply. The United States of America’s Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award (MBNQA) provided a framework wherein our very own
PQA was based. Because recognition such as this is given to an
organization that showed exceptional management qualities it also
creates more room for benchmarking and information sharing for other
organizations to follow.

In our country it is a necessity to build organizations that shows

exemplified performance in order to hone innovation and development.
As a country that requires more job for its people having organizations
that possess quality leadership will yield more jobs and later prosperity
for the whole Filipino society.
Summary:

2004 Education Criteria: Core Values,

Concepts, and Framework
The criteria are the basis for organizational assessments and it has
three important roles namely, to help improve organizational
performance, practices, capabilities and results; to facilitate
communication and sharing of best practices; and to serve as a working
tool for understanding and to guide organizational planning and
opportunities for learning. The goal of this is the delivery of ever-
improving value to students and stakeholders, contributing to education
quality; improvement of overall organizational effectiveness and
capabilities; and organizational and personal learning. There are a total
of 11 core values and concepts and they are as follow:

o Visionary Leadership
o Leaders should ensure the creation of strategies, systems
and methods for achieving excellence, stimulating
innovation and building knowledge and capabilities. The
values and strategies should help guide all activities and
decisions within the organization. It is also mentioned here
that all faculties and staff should be encouraged to
contribute, to develop and learn, to be innovative and to be
creative. Reinforcement of learning environment in the
organization is required.
o Learning centered education
o The goal Is placing the focus of education on learning and
the real needs of the students. A learning centered
 organization needs to fully understand these requirements
and translate them into appropriate curricula and
developmental experience. It is important to focus more on
student’s active learning and on the development of
problem solving skills. Both formative and summative
should be given in order to assess learning.
o Organizational and personal learning
o The requirement of having a well-executed approach to
organizational and personal learning is imperative. Learning
needs to be embedded in the way the organization
operates. Improvement on education requires a strong
emphasis on effective design of educational programs,
curricula and leaning environment. Learning therefore is
directed towards being more responsive, adaptive and
flexible to the needs of students, stakeholders and the
market.
o Valuing faculty, staff and partners
o Valuing faculty and staff means committing to their
satisfaction, development and well-being. This involves
more flexible, high performance work practices tailored to
faculty and staff with diverse workplace and home life
needs. The organization also needs to build internal and
external partnerships to better accomplish overall goals.
Successful partnership develops long-term objectives,
thereby creating a basis for mutual investments and
respect.
o Agility
o This requires a capacity for faster and more flexible
response to the needs of the students and stakeholders.
 All aspects of time performance are becoming increasingly
important and should be among the key process measures.
o Focus on the future
o A focus on the future requires understanding the short
and long term factors that affect the organization and the
education market. Pursuit of educational excellence
requires a strong future commitment to key stakeholders
such as the community etc.
o Managing for innovation
o Innovation means making meaningful change to improve an
organization’s programs, services and processes and to
create new value for the organization’s stakeholders.
Innovation is important for providing ever-improving
educational value to students and for improvising all
educational value to students and for improving all
educational and operational processes.
o Management by fact
o Organization depends on the measurement and analysis of
performance. Performance measurement should be focused
on student learning which requires a comprehensive and
integrated fact-based system. Analysis refers to
extracting larger meaning from data and information to
support evaluation, decision-making and operational
improvements.
o Social Responsibility
o An organization’s leader should stress responsibilities to
the public, ethical behavior and the need to practice good
citizenship. Leaders should be ROLE MODELS of the
organization. It is important to stress ethical behavior in
 all stakeholder transactions and interactions. Practicing
good citizenship refers to leadership and support of
publicly important purposes.
o Focus on results and creating value
o Focus on key results. Results should be used to create and
balance value for the students and for key stakeholders.
By creating value for students and stakeholders, the
organization contributes to improving overall education
performance and builds loyalty.
o Systems perspective
o The PQA criteria provides a systems perspective for
managing the organization to achieve performance
excellence. Successful management of overall performance
requires organization-specific synthesis which means
looking at the organization as a whole and building upon key
educational requirements, including strategic objectives
and action plan.

The following aforementioned values and concepts are beliefs and

behaviors found in high-performing organizations.
Reflection:

In the criteria of PQA the values and concepts that are practiced by
high-performing organizations are incorporated. Personally I want to
give more emphasis on two important values, although all the other
values and concepts are important but I think if you have these two
values therefore you are able to hone the rest of the values there are.

One is visionary leadership. I can’t emphasize more how important it is

to have a leader who has visions for the future. Having these visions
create possibilities for the organization and its people. Through
creation of strategies, systems and methods on how to achieve the
organization’s goals allows a concrete process on the steps to be taken
in order to attain what the company aims for.

Second is organizational and personal learning. A few years back I

attended one of Francis Kong’s talks and he said that learning is an on-
going process. Even after a person leaves the premise of the
university/college he/she attended, that does not mean that learning
ends there. If a person years to learn more, then that is a quality that
will ensure him/her a bright future. This continuous learning doesn’t
only apply to one person but rather to the whole organization so that
an innovative future is ensured.
Summary:

Key Characteristics of the Education Criteria

The Educational Criteria focus on organizational performance results
with the following key areas: Student learning results; Student and
stakeholder-focused results; budgetary, financial and market results;
faculty and staff results; organizational effectiveness results,
including key internal operational performance measures; and lastly
governance and social responsibility results.

The criteria are non-presciptive and adaptable because the focus is on

results, the selection of tools, techniques, system and organization
structure usually depends on factors relative to the organization and
also the focus is on common requirements, rather than common
procedures. The Criteria support a systems perspective to maintain
organization-wide goal alignment being that the systems perspective is
embedded in the integrated structure of the core values and concepts
of the criteria. The Criteria support goal-based diagnosis. The
diagnostic assessment tool used has 19 basic requirements that goes
beyond most performance reviews and is applicable to a wide range of
strategies and management systems.

Reflection:

The Education criteria focus on different organizational performance

areas and these are entirely related to the core values and concepts
mentioned above. The focus of the Education Criteria is more on the
results and not the procedures, tools or organization structure which
provides an outcome-based assessment of the organizations who
applied.
Summary:

2004 Education Criteria for Performance

Excellence
The Organizational profile is important for is serves as a starting point
for self-assessment for writing an application. It also helps the
organization identify gaps in key information and focus on key
performance requirements and performance results. The organizational
profile is a snapshot of the organization applying for the award
therefore it should include two important parts namely the
organizational description and organizational challenges.

The seven important categories under Criteria for Performance

Excellence are as follow:

 Leadership
o Under Leadership which has a total of 120 points, examines
how the applicant organization’s senior leaders address the
values, directions and performance expectations, as well as
focus on students and stakeholders, student learning, faculty
and staff empowerment, innovation and organizational learning.
Also examined are the organization’s governance and how the
organization addresses its public and community responsibility.

 Strategic Planning
o A total of 85 points, strategic planning category examines how
the organization develops strategic objectives and action plans.
Also examined are how the chosen strategic objectives and
action plans are deployed and how progress is measured.
 Student, Stakeholder and Market Focus
o The Student, Stakeholder and Market Focus category holding
a total of 85 points, examines how the organization determines
requirements, expectations and preferences of students,
stakeholder and markets. Also examined is how the
organization builds relationships with students and
stakeholders and determines the key factors that attract
students and partners and lead to student and stakeholder
satisfaction, loyalty and persistence and to increased
educational service and programs.

 Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge

o This category given a total of 90 points examines how the
organization selects, gathers, analyzes, manages and improves
its data, information and knowledge assets.

 Faculty and Staff Focus

o The Faculty and Staff Focus Category examines how the
organization’s work systems and faculty and staff learning and
motivation enables faculty and staff to develop and utilize
their full potential in alignment with the organization’s overall
objectives and action plan. It also examines the organization’s
efforts to build and maintain a work environment and faculty
and staff support climate conducive to performance excellence
and to personal and organizational growth. This category holds
a total of 85 points.

 Process Management
o The Process management category carrying a total of 85 points,
examines the key aspects of the organization’s process
management, including key learning-centered processes for
your education programs, offerings and services that create
student, stakeholder and organizational value. It also includes
 key support processes. This category encompasses all key
processes and all work.

 Organizational Performance Results

o The category of organizational performance result holds the
highest overall point of 450 points, examines the organization’s
performance and improvement in key areas – student learning
results, student and stakeholder-focused results; budgetary ,
financial and market performance faculty and staff results;
operational performance; and governance and social
responsibility. Also examined are performance levels relative
to those of competitors and comparable organizations.

Reflection:

The aforementioned Criteria for Performance Excellence provided

instructions on applicant organizations on how to address the seven
criteria namely Leadership, Strategic Planning, Student, Stakeholder
and Market Focus, Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management,
Faculty and Staff Focus, Process Management and Organizational
Performance Results. These key criteria give a good view on how an
organization operates and what the results of these processes are so
that a proper assessment can be done.
Summary:

Glossary Key Terms

This chapter defines the terms used throughout the educational
Criteria Booklet that are important to performance management.

1. Action plan – refers to specific actions that respond to short and

long term strategic objectives.
2. Active Learning – refers to interactive instructional techniques
that engage students in such higher-order thinking tasks such as
analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
3. Alignment – refers to the consistency of plans, processes,
information, resource decisions, actions, results, analysis and
learning to support key organization-wide goal.
4. Analysis – refers to examination of facts and data
5. Anecdotal – refers to process information that lacks specific
methods, measures, deployment mechanisms and evaluation
factors.
6. Approach – refers to how an organization addresses the PQA
criteria item requirements.
7. Basic Requirement – refers to the most central concept of an
item.
8. Benchmark – refers to processes and results that represent best
practices and performance for similar activities inside or outside
the education community.
9. Cycle Time – refers to the time required to fulfill commitments
or to complete tasks.
10. Deployment – refers to the extent to which an
organization’s approach is applied to the requirements of the PQA
criteria.
11. Educational Delivery – refers to the deployment of instructional
approaches.
12. Effective – refers to how well an approach, process or
measure addresses its intended purpose.
13. Empowerment – refers to giving faculty and staff the
authority and responsibility to make decisions and take actions.
14. Formative Assessment – refers to frequent or ongoing
evaluation during courses, program or learning experiences that
gives an early indication of what students are learning, as well as
their strengths and weaknesses.
15. Goals – refers to future condition or performance level that
one intends to attain.
16. Governance – refers to the system of management and
controls exercised in the stewardship of the organization.
17. High-Performance Work – refers to work approaches used
to systematically pursue ever higher levels of overall
performance.
18. How – refers to the process that an organization uses to
accomplish its mission requirements.
19. Innovation – refers to making meaning change to improve
program, services, and processes and create new value for
students and stakeholders.
20. Integration – refers to harmonization of plans, processes,
information, resource decisions, actions, results, analysis and
learning to support key goals.
21. Key – refers to major or most important elements or
factors critical to achieving intended outcome.
22. Knowledge Assets – refers to the accumulated intellectual
resources of the organization.
23. Leadership system – refers to how leadership is exercised
throughout the organization.
24. Levels – refers to numerical information that places an
organization’s results and performance on a meaningful
measurement scale.
25. Measures and Indicators – refers to numerical information
that quantifies input, output and performance dimensions of
programs, offerings, processes, services and the overall
organization.
26. Mission – refers to overall function of an organization.
27. Multiple Requirements – refers to individual questions
criteria uses need to answer within each area to address.
28. Overall Requirement – refers to the topics users need to
address when responding to the central theme of an item.
29. Partners – refers to other schools, employers and workplace,
social service organizations etc.
30. Performance – refers to output results and their outcomes
obtained from processes and services that permit evaluation and
comparison relative to goals, standards, past results and other
organizations.
31. Performance Excellence – refers to an integrated approach
to organizational performance management that results in
improving value to students and stakeholders, improvement of
overall organizational effectiveness and capabilities and lastly
organizational and personal learning.
32. Performance Projection – refers to estimates of future
performance or goals for future results.
33. Persistence – refers to continued attendance of students
towards the completion of an educational goal or training
objective.
34. Process – refers to linked activities with the purpose of
producing a program or service for students and/or stakeholders
within or outside the organization.
35. Productivity – refers to measures of efficiency of resource
use.
36. Purpose – refers to the fundamental reason that the
organization exists.
37. Results – refers to outputs and outcomes achieved by an
organization in addressing the purposes of a PQA Criteria Item.
38. Senior Leaders – refers to those within the main
responsibility for managing the overall organization.
39. Stakeholders – refers to all groups that are or might be
affected by an organization’s actions and success.
40. Strategic Challenges – refers to those pressures that exert
a decisive influence on the organization’s likelihood of future
successes.
41. Strategic Objectives – refers to an organization’s
articulated aims or responses to address major change and
improvement, competitive issues and/or education advantages.
42. Student Segments – refers to groups of students with
similar needs.
43. Summative Assessment – refers to longitudinal analysis of
the learning and performance of students and alumni.
44. Systematic – refers to approaches that are repeatable and
use data and information so that improvement and learning are
possible.
45. Trends – refers to numerical information that shows the
direction and rate of change for an organization’s result.
46. Value – refers to the perceived worth of a program, service,
process, asset or function relative to cost and relative to possible
alternatives.
47. Value Creation – refers to processes that produce benefit
for students and stakeholders and for the organization.
48. Values – refers to guiding principles and behavior that
embody how the organization and its people are expected to
operate.
49. Vision – refers to desired future state of that organization.
 50. Work System – refers to how the faculty and staff are
organized into formal or informal units to accomplish mission and
objectives.

Summary:

2004 Educational Criteria: Category and

Item Descriptions
Leadership (Category 1)
- This category is comprised or organizational leadership with the
purpose of examining the key aspect of organization’s leadership
and governance and the Social Responsibility which serves to
examine how the organization fulfills its public responsibilities
and all the entails it.

Strategic Planning (Category 2)

- Under strategic planning are Strategy development and strategy
deployment each with its own purpose. The assessment of how
the organization set strategic directions develops objectives,
guiding and developing key education and other associated
performance requirement all fall under strategy development.
While Strategy deployment refers to how the organization
converts the strategic objectives into action plans to accomplish
the objectives.

Student, Stakeholders and Market Focus (Category 3)

- The organization is required to determine general and special
needs of current students and stakeholders and how the
organization segments the students, stakeholders and markets.
The purpose of this is to gain knowledge about the current and
 future student segments and markets, with the aim of offering
relevant and effective programs and services. The student and
stakeholder relation and satisfaction is taken into consideration
for it aims on enhancing student learning and the organizations
ability to deliver its services, satisfy both students and
stakeholders and develop new opportunities and foster continuing
interactions and positive referrals.

Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management (Category 4)

- Focuses on one, Measurement and Analysis of organizational
performance which serves to examine the organization’s
management, and use of data and information for performance
measurement and analysis in support of the organizational’s
planning and performance improvement. And second, Information
and Knowledge management with the purpose of examining how
the organization ensures the availability of high-quality, timely
data and information for all key users such as students,
stakeholders, partners etc.

Faculty and Staff Focus (Category 5)

- The focus of this category revolves around work system, faculty
and staff learning motivation and faculty and staff well-being and
satisfaction. The requirements of each subcategory address the
key human resource practices that are directed towards creating
and maintaining a high-performance workplace with a strong focus
on students and learning towards development.

Process Management (Category 6)

- Involves two subcategories namely the Learning Centered
Processes which examines educational programs of the
organization and the Support Process which deals with the
organizations support processes with the aim of improving the
overall operational performance.
Organizational Performance Results (Category 7)
- This category is comprised of six key subcategories namely the
student learning results; student and stakeholder-focused
results; Budgetary, financial and market results; Faculty and
Staff Results; Organizational effectiveness results; and
Governance and Social responsibility Results. The response to this
category should include the organization’s comparison information
that incorporates brief descriptions of how the organization
ensures appropriateness of each comparison.

Reflection:

In this chapter the seven key categories were better defined as the
description is given along with the purpose and requirements in each
category shedding more light into them. This chapter helps the
organization who wants to apply for the PQA and serves as a guide in
creating their organizational profile and in filling out their application
and its requirement.
Summary:

Scoring System
This chapter includes the discussion regarding how the scores are
gathered and computed in order to determine who will be the recipient
of the award. There are three evaluation dimensions involved:

1. Approach
o Refers to how the organization addressed the item
requirements – “the method used.”
2. Deployment
o Refers to the extent to which the organization approach is
applied. With the following factors taken into consideration:
use of the approach in addressing Item requirements
relevant and important to the organization and the use of
the approach by all appropriate work units.
3. Results
o This refers to “outcomes”
o The factors used to evaluate are the organization’s current
performance; the organization’s performance relative to
appropriate comparisons and/or benchmarks, meaning how
the organization is at par with the other business
establishments that had set the standard; and lastly
linkages of the organization’s result measures to important
key student, stakeholders, market, process and action plan
performance requirements identified in the organizational
profile and in approach deployment items.

Each category has a designated score as listed in the scoring guidelines

that is to be used in order to obtain the result or the final score of a
certain organization. What the organization’s score determines
whether they will be the recipient of the award or not and also
whether their organization’s performance belongs to a certain level of
excellence.
Summary:

2004 Education Criteria Response

Guidelines
This chapter offers assistance to Criteria user in responding most
effectively to the requirements of the 19 Criteria Items. The following
are the general guidelines to be used in the PQA:

1. Read the entire Criteria Handbook

2. Review the Item format and understand how to respond to the
Item Requirements
3. Start by Preparing the Organizational Profile

Also included in this chapter are guidelines for responding to

Approach-Deployment Items and Result Items and will be mentioned
below.

Guidelines for Responding to Approach-Deployment Items:

1. Understand the meaning of “how”

2. Understand the meaning of “what”
3. Write and Review responses with the following guidelines in mind:
Show the processes as systematic; show deployment information
summary; show focus and consistency; and lastly respond fully to
Item Requirements.
4. Cross-reference when appropriate

Guidelines for Responding to Result Items:

1. Focus on the most critical organizational performance result

2. Note the meaning of the four key requirements from the scoring
guidelines for effective reporting of results data: trends,
performance, comparison and breadth and importance of results
3. Include trend data covering actual periods for tracking trends
4. Use a compact format- graphs and tables
5. Integrate results into the body of the text
6. Refer to the Scoring guidelines
Summary:

Summary of Eligibility Categories and

Restrictions
Both sectors from private and public are eligible to apply for the PQA
provided that they fall below the Eligibility Categories. For the private
sectors both the small and medium enterprise are encouraged to apply
as defined under the Magna Carta for Small and Medium Scale
Enterprises. Large Enterprises that are engaged in manufacturing,
service companies, agriculture and other industries are also allowed to
apply.

As for the public sectors all coming from the Departments, Bureaus
and Attached agencies are also welcomed to apply for the PQA.
Government-owned and/or controlled corporations and subsidiaries
together with State Universities and Colleges, Local Government Units
and Other Government agencies are Eligible to enter PQA.

Charitable, Trade and Industry, Fraternal and Sports

Organizations/Associations and Institutions are not eligible. Recipients
of Recognition levels are eligible to reapply after two years.

Other requirements for all applicants are that they must comply with
relevant statutory and regulatory requirements; must have employees
trained in PQA application development; and must have conducted an
internal assessment based on the relevant PQA criteria. Results of
internal assessment should be presented to the Award Administrator
when applying for eligibility.
 Nursing
Administration
Windelyn Gamaro, RN