S - Strategic Direction Review (A to Z Tips)
Your school’s strategy sets the direction and establishes priorities for you and your team: admissions, marketing, administration, and all your other departments, allowing them to work efficiently together, to achieve your school's goals.
With all we have been through so far in 2020, Brexit, COVID-19, and the financial pressures of an ever increasingly competitive market, there has never been a more critical time than now to review your school’s strategic direction.
Now is the time to ensure that your priorities at the time of writing, hold true. Now is the time to give your team clear goals, priorities and direction, and now is the time to secure your school’s financial future, as well as that of its academic and pastoral achievements.
Prior to lockdown, Cath Bufton-Green recorded a video guide, essentially as a training tool for Governors; however, the suggestions included within in the video can be easily adapted to suit your school’s current situation and will be particularly useful to refer to during any strategy review to ensure stability for you, your staff and your school.
See our video guide to setting your school’s Strategic Direction.
A GUIDE TO SETTING YOUR SCHOOL’S STRATEGIC DIRECTION
Every business needs a plan. In the words of Yogi Beard “if you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else”. In today’s heavily competitive environment, having a robust strategic plan is fundamental to your school’s achievement.
1 – WHY YOUR GOVERNORS INVOLVEMENT IN THE STRATEGIC PLAN IS IMPORTANT.
Your strategic plan is what sets your school apart from its competitors.
The plan should outline what your school does differently to its competitors or, the things your school does that are the same, but are done in a different way.
Often, the plan is seen as the Head’s responsibility. Creating, or reviewing, your school’s strategic direction should involve the entire Governing body. As it is this document that determines the school’s priorities which the Governing body have the responsibility of monitoring and evaluating.
What better way for your Governors to be up to speed on its intricacies than by being a part of its conception?
2 – WHERE TO START?
There are so many regulations, reporting requirements and initiatives for schools to adhere to, it is often a challenge to identify the most important aspects to monitor.
It is good practice to start at the beginning, regardless of the status of your current plan.
Begin by holding a strategy day. This day should include you – the Governors, and your senior leadership team.
The purpose of the day is to carve out the school’s strategic direction for the next three to five years.
Aside from being purposeful in creating the school’s strategic direction, the day will also provide a valuable opportunity for the two bodies – the Governors and leadership team – to get to know each other better.
The day should begin by creating alignment between the school’s values and the vision. This is to ensure that everyone approaches the discussion from the same understanding.
3 – VALUES.
Values are the principles that guide our thinking and behaviour. Your Governing body are responsible for the values of your school.
Your school’s values underpin its culture, strategy, policies and procedures and should be held at the heart of all decision-making.
The values are the basic, fundamental beliefs that guide, or motivate attitudes or actions. They should be meaningful, talked about and lived by everyone in the school community.
Values help us to determine what is important to us.
It is likely that your school’s values are already in circulation, but they may well have been created some time ago. It would be good practice to review them, make sure they still hold true and adapt them if necessary.
Ask yourselves:
• are your values reflective of the current climate? Have they held true?
• do your values resonate with every member of the school community?
• are all your decisions and actions consistent with your school’s values?
4 – VISION.
The vision should express your school’s core beliefs; the efforts your school has pledged to make to improve the experience for all pupils, parents and staff.
The vision should be inspiring and motivating. It needs to create buy-in from the whole school community.
The vision should be succinct in describing what the school wishes to achieve, and what that achievement will look like in three to five years’ time; any less than this does not provide enough time for the impact of its implementation to be felt.
Your school’s vision does not need to be rewritten annually, but it is good practice to review it regularly.
Ask yourselves:
• is the vision challenging, yet achievable?
• does the vision fit with the school’s values?
• does the vision reflect the views of all stakeholders – pupils, parents and staff?
• how will the vision be communicated to the whole school community?
Once the overarching school’s values and vision are aligned, the strategy can be created.
5 – WRITING THE STRATEGIC PLAN.
The Strategic Plan is the document that sets out how your school’s vision will be achieved.
It is important to give this stage the gravitas it requires and ensure that everyone at the strategy day contributes.
You need to allow enough time during the day to reflect, discuss and consult before any decisions are made.
It is key that a high level of integrity, trust and openness feature in order that everyone feels involved and that all ideas are considered.
It is important to work through the challenges, risks and barriers for each idea in order to road-test its suitability in realising your vision.
The strategy will reflect the upcoming year. Try to keep it succinct as it will provide the backbone for the school’s more detailed development plan.
The strategy will cover a number of subjects, such as:
• Staff
• Pupils
• Engagement with parents
• Financial performance
• Facilities
• Communication
The subjects can be further broken down into sub-divisions, for example: Staff, could be broken down into:
o Quality of teaching
o Morale and wellbeing
o Leadership
Pupils, could be sub-divided into:
o Progress and attainment
o Curriculum
o Extra-curricular offering
o Wellbeing
o Preparation for the next stages
For each of the subjects, the strategy needs to:
• identify improvements that will help to achieve the vision
• outline what success looks like, based on the desired outcome
• involve others – staff, pupils and parents, where appropriate
• ensure each aspect is measurable and with considered timeframes
• outline how the Governing body will monitor it; how often and by what measures?
6 – MEASUREMENT AND REVIEW.
Once the strategy document has been checked to ensure the appropriate level of budget and staff resource have been provided for each aspect, an operational plan, also referred to as a school development plan can be created.
The school development plan clearly outlines the actions that demonstrate how the strategy will be implemented into school life.
We recommend that the Governing body monitor the strategy document termly. Measurement is best done by receiving reports on its implementation and progress.
The strategy document should then be reviewed at the end of each academic year. At the same time, the next year’s strategy document can be created, in conjunction with the leadership team.
It is important that the strategy document clearly defines what success looks like, with each aspect identified together with how it is to be measured.
When determining what success looks like, it is important to ensure that the outcomes are SMART:
• specific
• measurable
• achievable
• realistic
• time-bound
*See the blog ‘O - Objective Setting’ to see which order these should be addressed in for the best results.
Do not be limited to measuring outcomes by academic methods alone. Not all areas for improvement will be quantitative. For example, pastoral initiatives such as mental health and wellbeing could be monitored through reports from staff or findings from pupil surveys.
When assessing the impact of the strategy, consider the following:
• do Governors have access to all the data and information they need to monitor the improvements?
• are Governors able to access that information independently, or do they depend on members of the school staff?
• do we have the skills on the governing body to interpret data, or do we rely on senior leaders to do this?
• is the information at the right level of detail – detailed enough to tell us what we need to know, but not so detailed as to make it difficult to read?
• is information available on all the aspects that we agree are important, or only on those aspects that are easy to measure?
It would be best practice to have these questions in mind when creating, or reviewing, your strategy and the monitoring expectations, to ensure that the evidence, data and information is captured in the best format and at appropriate time intervals throughout the year.
SUMMARY.
• your strategic plan is what sets your school apart from its competitors
• creating your school’s strategic direction should involve the entire Governing body
• begin by holding a strategy day, to include the Governors and senior leadership team
• use the day to carve out the school’s strategic direction for the next three to five years and for the Governors and senior leadership team to get to know each other better
• the day should begin by creating alignment between the school’s values and its vision
o values are the principles that guide our thinking and behaviour
o the vision is an inspiring and motivational expression of the school’s core beliefs
• The strategy document is used to create the school development plan, otherwise known as an operational plan
• The strategy should be monitored termly
• The strategy should be reviewed at the end of each academic year
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