Strategic Planning - Research Paper Example

Abstract

Strategic planning is always very essential for a better future. Like any other county, XYZ County has a lot of factors that it must take into considerations to help maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the county. This paper will look into details the school mission, vision, and goals. It will then look into the SWOT and PESTLE analysis of the XYZ County. In this way, a better strategic plan will be looked into. A process that will be used in the development of the strategic plan will be developed. The paper will finally develop a strategic plan that will be used for the XYZ County.

Beliefs, Vision, Mission of the XYZ County Schools

Understanding the beliefs, vision, and mission of schools that are in the county can help to formulate one main objective that most of the schools are targeting. Being that this is a strategic plan for the schools, it can be assumed that their primary goal is to have an ample environment that will accommodate all the stakeholders involved in the school system, parents, community, teachers, students and many more others. The strategic plan is to ensure all these stakeholders are comfortable and that the students are well taken care of in all the aspects that may affect them. The strategic plan is to ensure that any negativity that may affect the school set up is predetermined and the right actions to counter them are set.

Mission

The vision of most of the county schools at XYZ is to empower the students so that they can graduate college and have a greater future. This is to ensure that the students are well equipped in all aspects of the real world.

Vision

The vision of the schools at the county school converges at the point where they can be an agent of change, transforming the students into future ready-learners and contributing members of the society.

Beliefs

XYZ County schools have some beliefs that are all centered towards the betterment of the lives of the students. Some of the beliefs are:

1. All students will be able to learn in a safe and secure environment

2. Effective and invested staff that have a great impact on the student learning

3. A quality public education that can transform individuals and communities

4. In continuous improvement

5. All stakeholders are accountable in for education of the students

6. Students find success when schools are effective, communities are engaged, and the families are involved

SWOT analysis

XYZ County has a lot of strengths that when looked into and taken into great considerations, there are a lot of developments that can come from it. Basing from the location of the school and the resources available, a SWOT analysis will form the basis of the strategic plan as it will show some of the weaknesses that the county is facing and the right measures that should be taken to rectify the weaknesses. SWOT analysis will also help in enhancing and making the best out of the strengths of the county. This section will look into the SWOT analysis of the XYZ County.

Strength

There are some strengths that schools in the XYZ County have. These ranges from the location, topography and the resources that the schools are in. One of the main strengths of the schools in the county is that there is effective communication among the shareholders (Leigh, 2016). This is a strength of the schools because the stakeholders have the ability to identify challenges facing the schools and through the effective communication, they can look for the right measures to correct them. Effective communication also ensures that there are better platforms for discussing development projects (Friend, 2013). Another strength is the effective system and structure in place that supports system and structures in place to support curriculum and instruction best practices. The development of technology is also a strength as this will assist the students to learn in an easy and effective way.

Weaknesses

Despite the strengths that are being experienced in the XYZ County, there are some weaknesses too that are being experienced. One of the major weaknesses is that there is a higher teacher turnover. Also, there are some of the behaviors in the county that negatively impacts the learning.

Opportunities

The location of the XYZ County is a better place that puts it in a position to access a lot of opportunities. Some of the opportunities are the healthy initiatives that give hope for the literacy program for school climate and culture, community growth and partnership that are available, grant opportunities that need to be explored as well as the stable technology that is in the county.

Threats

XYZ County as any other county faces some threats. Some of the threats are the teacher demand which is increasing with less support, and many teachers are quitting due to the demands, budget cuts, and the funding as well as the increasing cost of technology and maintenance to maintain trends.

The strategic plan will offer how all these factors will be taken into considerations and make a better future for all the schools in the XYZ County.

PESTLE analysis

Political factors

1. Changes of government as well as an implementation of new policies that affect the education system of the XYZ County.

2. Political instability such as the frequent changes of teachers that affect the students learning

3. Changes in the education policy

4. The positive political factor is the conservative nature of the political environment where all the four towns have tree lined trees, good churches, and well-entrenched political establishments.

Economic Factors

1. Inflation contributing to high prices of the commodity that has strained the finances of the school

2. Freeze on the teacher's employment that has caused shortage of the teachers in some of the XYZ County schools

3. Financial stability of the XYZ County school and particularly the ability to pay debts has increased the confidence among suppliers to supply for the school

4. Refreshment of workers in other sectors of the economy as well as the government as a result of the economic depression of the students

Social factors

1. Presence of the religion all over the four towns which has caused unity of the school social relations among different stakeholders

2. Some of the diseases that have impacted on the performance of the teachers, parents, and students

3. Family backgrounds- The nature of families, polygamous or single have impacted on the performance of the students

4. Conservative nature of some parents has made them stick to regressive traditions.

5. Gender imbalance

6. Drug substance abuse among teachers and the students

Technological factors

The application of the modern communication devices like the e-mail, mobile phones is a challenge for the school because this kind of communication channels have disruptive nature.

Lack of enough technological know-how among some of the students, workers, and teachers

The use of electronics and computers has caused some problems to computer illiterate learners and teachers.

Main Challenges

From the PESTLE and the SWOT analysis, they all narrow down to the point where the schools in the XYZ County are looking into the key problems that have the ability to impact negatively on the schools with the realization of the strategic goals. These problems have been highlighted in the above section, and therefore the strategic plan will look into the best ways that can be used to mitigate the challenges and maximize on some of the positivity that surrounds the schools in the county.

Explanation of the Process of Developing the Strategic Plan

Developing a strategic plan and implementing the plan with fidelity is an important task for school districts. Strategic plans, if written and carried out, have the potential to shift student achievement among public schools. Our education system has taken many twists and turns from its inception until now. According to Brimley, Garfield, & Verstegen, (2012) education is an investment in human capital and the most important producer of human capital in the United States is the public education system. (Brimley, Garfield, & Verstegen, 2012, p. 1) We owe it to our students to implement a solid strategic plan that allows our students to reap the benefits for years to come.

School districts tend to cave when resources and funding are at the heart of implementation of a strategic plan. Recently, our district went through a year-long audit of our policies, procedures, curriculum, governance, and more. They combed through every stitch of anything we had going and gave us advice on next steps. One of the things that were clearly noted was that our finances did not align with our goals, teacher student ratio, and student achievement data. This required us to have extensive conversations and meetings with our finance department. Our district was comfortable and very used to having a great deal of cushion financially.

Pickeral, Hutchinson, D., (2009) referenced two frameworks to focus and guide school boards in their work and further noted key behaviors of school boards and superintendents that influence district climate and higher student achievement. (Pickeral, T., Evans, L., Hughes, W., & Hutchinson, D., 2009, p. 4) One particular behavior discussed was shared leadership. Our Superintendent was the former chief financial director and has not been at the building level or classroom arena ever so his strength was in numbers and fiscal responsibility. The audit revealed that the money sitting in the bank was not improving student achievement. He needed to embrace the instructional leaders around him and allow shared leadership to unfold. This was a turning point for our new strategic plan.

The teams that were assembled began creating a new vision, mission, and action plan. The teams included all stakeholders and pulled in the community. With community awareness and buy in, climate and culture shifted (Belansky, et al. 2013). It was no longer about money but students. The cost of this and that faded and decisions were recommended to the board that was student focused. This work helped us gain not only teaching positions that were needed to support firmly a strategic plan but also weeded out many curriculum items that were mandated. If the data did not show that it was meaningful to instruction, then schools were able to realign the use of time and choice of curriculum to implement.

The strategic plan is not only influenced by finances, and community support but state and federal budgets play a role in the plan as well. The budget cuts from federal and state budgets have pushed major cuts in funding to the local budget. The tricky part is the federal and state mandates have not changed, so it forces local budgets to pick up the extra expenses. This impacts school districts abilities to implement portions of strategic plans fiscally (Johnsen, 2015). Therefore, we must invest locally and at the state level in our number one producer of human capital which is our students. Public school funding depends on our private sector through taxation so we must have an economy that generates capital and is profitable.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Rationale

The major objective of this plan is to offer a thoughtful and guided implementation of the education programs as the national government has prescribed through the ministry of education. All the local stakeholders that are involved in any school set up, student, teachers, parents and the board of governors have been taken into considerations. This strategic plan will look into all aspects of learning that is controlled at the school level. It will seek to determine an effective institutional framework for the service delivery of the strategies which when looked into should bring about the realization of the main goals of the schools in the XYZ County.

Essential Success Factors

1. Sustained student population for a good number of streams for every given class. The number of streams that should be in any class should be determined by the number of resources and the number of teachers in the school. No school in XYZ County should have more than four streams for any class. This, therefore, means that the schools at this given time are required to have a given specific entry. The school entry of new students should not be overdone or underdone.

2. Continued funding from Georgia Department of Education facilities division to stabilize all the operations that the county schools are involved in. The Georgia Department of Education facilities division has managed to accumulate a relatively huge amount of money that can be of great benefit to the school. The funding by this institution will depend on the school population of the individual schools. Being that all the schools in the XYZ County have not yet attained a very high status, the growth and development of all the schools to maturity and self-assurance will depend on the continuous accumulation of money from the institution. It will also ensure that teachers are given the enough motivation to work towards attaining the goals of the objective. This kind of funding that the schools get will also help to pay workers, retention of the students in the school and the general operation of the school (Washington, 2017).

3. Provision of qualified teachers by the department of education in Georgia. For effective and successful learning outcome among the students of the XYZ County, the body that is involved will have to ensure that they employ enough qualified teachers to all the schools in the county. The number of teachers that are employed at one station should be directly proportional to the number of students that are at that institution. This will ensure that the school of a channel if the funds for boosting the education standards instead of payment to the teachers.

4. Increased community and parental participation. It is the belief of the XYZ County schools that for a better outcome of the student's results, the community and the parents are very crucial. They have a very great role in ensuring that the students become what they want. Therefore, the role of the community and the parents in the success of all the schools will be very big. It is no doubt that the parents will always be the pillar of inspiration to the students, their main role models and provider of the resources to their students (Kinights, 2014). This is because the department of education in Georgia will only pay for the tuition and the general learning at the school. The community will have the role of ensuring that they provide an ample environment for the teachers and the students. They can do thus by ensuring that there is peace in the county. Furthermore, they can engage in a lot of other school oriented services such as collecting funds for running the schools. The community can also help in protecting the students through offering the right directions to the students and reporting any bad activity that they can see from the students in the county.

5. An enabling institutional framework. For the success of all the schools, there must be a complete framework that works towards attaining the set goals of the institution. Each school is required to have an active board of governors that have a proactive duty in the school management and gives a conducive vice environment for both learning and working.

The general goal of the strategic plan of the schools at XYZ County is to excel in the accomplishment of the learning outcomes. The students that will graduate from all the schools will be able to be all round to go through the daily challenges of the ever dynamic world. To attain all the set goals, the objectives below will be pursued aggressively in the next three years.

Objective one: TIMELY AND EFFECTIVE CURRICULUM DELIVERY

For the realization of good results both in the external and internal examination of the XYZ County school which are the main indicators of learning, an effective curriculum delivery will be achieved using the below strategies.

1. Proper orientation of the students and teachers adherence to the school values- The new comers to the school will be taken through the school orientation.

2. Teacher preparedness- The school will pursue a policy of preparing schemes of work for the entire year. This will be done at the departmental level. The yearly schemes will be typed and saved and be issued to the teachers at the beginning of every term.

3. Provision of remedial teaching and learning- All the schools, will have to have remedial learning. This will ensure that both the students and the teachers in the school will have to maximize on any available time in the school to attain their set goals.

4. Timely and proper assessment of content that has been taught. This will ensure that the students are up to terms with what the teachers have been teaching.

OBJECTIVE TWO: ESTABLISHING AND MAINTAINING QUALITY REQUIRED PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR LEARNING AND TEACHING

No school will emerge successfully when they have poor infrastructure. This will entail the latest technology for the student as well as good buildings that will provide an ample environment for all the students. Within the following the years, the school will implement the below strategies to achieve this.

1. Request the Georgia department of education for finance assistance

2. Mobilize funds from the parents to assist in the development of the schools

3. Mobilize funds for the schools through the community.

4. Inquire from various sponsors to assist in the development of the school.

OBJECTIVE THREE: EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

For the schools to have a culture of learning and achievement, all the schools will have a very efficient and hardworking management system. A lot of teams will be formed to facilitate the attainment of these objectives. Some of the teams that will be formed will be spiritual teams, academic team, co-curriculum team, time table committee and disciplinary committee. All these teams will function together towards the attainment of the set goals of all the schools in the county.