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Chapter I
Introduction
In the first edition of this book we used the phrase âthe thicker the plan the less it affects classroom practice!â We still agree with this but we would now add that a school's response to an inspector should be, âSorry, we don't have a school development plan â that is reductionist 20th century thinking! What we do have is an holistic planning process.â Our ongoing work with schools suggests that the short-term school development planning process is well established and functioning effectively in most schools. However, there is also evidence from our research that this short-term planning is often becoming over-prescriptive and reductionist in its approach, not least in its need to respond to the pressure of OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) inspections. We see the necessity to build on this short-term planning but to make it more streamlined and focused and, at the same time, to set it in a broader strategic framework.
Our model of planning considers that there are three interactive strands to the process as shown in Figure 1.1.
In this chapter we will outline the nature and dimensions of the model and its elements and then go on to describe how the chapters that follow will consider the detail of each strand of the planning process, with examples from schools and LEAs.
Futures perspective
We do not believe it is possible to write a detailed futures plan for a school. What we believe is important is that schools engage in a futures dialogue to develop a futures perspective. This then enables the futures context or framework in which the school is operating to inform medium and shorter-term planning. It is also important to define what we understand by âfutures thinkingâ because there is a danger that we may think of âfuturesâ as the year 2050 and a fictional world of Star Trek (although one of the authors thinks this is a documentary!). We believe that it is more useful to set the concept of futures thinking more deeply in the framework of the school and to link it to pupils. In business, the concept of a âproduct life-cycleâ is often used. An example would be the design of a car. Although a model may have a number of minor make-overs, it will be completely remodelled after five to ten years. How would we relate product life-cycle to the school sector? In schools, a child starting nursery school at the age of three in 2004 will not leave the primary school until 2012. Rather than thinking of future generations of children, what is the school planning to do for the children who have just started by the time they have reached the last year in the primary school? A similar analysis can be made in the secondary school for the eleven-year-old who has just started. What is the school going to provide for that student when she is eighteen? A consideration of these concrete examples puts futures thinking into a five to ten-year framework. It also makes it real in terms of the child just starting a school and the responsibility that we have for that educational journey. In Chapter Two we explore the nature of futures thinking in the school more fully.
Figure 1.1 A model for school planning
The strategic dimension
Strategy has been defined in a number of ways, and a detailed consideration of this will be undertaken in Chapter Three. In general terms, strategy should be seen as a medium-term activity, perhaps three to five years, and one which deals with broad aggregated data, rather than detailed plans. The concept of strategic flow (Davies and Davies 2003) summarises the nature of strategy used in this book as follows.
Figure 1.2 The strategic flow (Davies and Davies 2003)
This concept of strategic flow begins with the process of undertaking a strategic analysis of the school and its environment in order to determine possible courses of action. The course of action can be considered to fall into one of two broad categories: strategic planning or strategic intent. Strategic planning operates most effectively in an environment in which the school knows where it wants to go, understands how to get there, has the organisational capability and capacity to undertake the journey and will be able to evaluate the outcomes by some predetermined criteria. Strategic intent is effective in a situation where the school knows what it wants to achieve but does not, as yet, know how to get there. The school has to go through a process of building capacity and capability to understand fully the nature and dimensions of the strategic challenge and then has to work out how to establish a successful process for achieving those intents. The complexities around the different forms of planning for the medium-term are considered in Chapter Three. We have chosen to discuss futures thinking in Chapter Two and strategy in Chapter Three before considering strategic analysis in Chapter Four. It could be argued that analysis should come first but we felt it was better to establish the conceptual framework of futures and strategy to provide the contextual understanding for the analysis phase. Although some writers (Fidler 2002; Tsaikkiros and Pashiardis 2002) outline the strategic analysis, choice and implementation approach of Johnson and Scholes (1993), in practice, of course, schools do not go through a linear planning process. We believe that the process of planning is far more iterative and complex than it is often portrayed (Davies 2002a; Ellison 2002).
The operational dimension: action planning
We now use the term action planning for the short-term or operational stage of the planning process which sets out the proposals for a one to two year period. We believe that this terminology best reflects the nature of these shorter-term plans in schools and the need for clearly specified activities and outcomes. To reflect the DfES terminology, we are reserving the terms âtargetsâ and âtarget-settingâ for pupil outcomes and the process of specifying them.
When considering the style and focus of the short-term plan, there has been a shift in emphasis from input-based approaches to those which are output or outcomes-based. This difference can be seen as follows. Early school development plans tended to be what, in economic terms, we would describe as input budgeting plans which, typically, had a series of inputs down the left-hand side of an A3 sheet such as:
Curriculum development
Staffing
Buildings
Equipment
Community links
Governors
and so on
Across the top of the sheet would be who does what, when, how, costs, evaluation etc. This contrasts with the move to output or outcome-based approaches in the late 1990s and the first years of the 21st century which focus on specifying that which should be achieved. Now the increasingly common planning format is to have a series of outputs or outcomes down the left-hand side such as percentage increases in literacy and numeracy scores, attendance rates and so on.
As well as the nature and format of the plan, we would like schools to consider a realistic time period which can be covered by an action plan. We suggest that two years is appropriate for this level of detailed planning. Adding more and more years onto a detailed plan does not suddenly make it strategic. It may simply turn it into an unrealistic wish list. The disaggregated detail should not be extended in planning terms but, rather, it should be aggregated into broader information and stored as part of the strategic dimension.
The overall framework of a plan
It is important that, both in practice in schools and in this book, the terms used are clearly defined. We intend to use the generic term âschool improvement planâ as the overall framework. Within this, the futures element will be a five- to ten-year framework, the strategic dimension will take the school three to five years forward and the action planning stage will have a one- to two-year timespan.
Figure 1.3 The planning time-dimensions
It is also critical that the three strands are not seen as isolated from each other and that there is a flow between them, an idea that is encapsulated in our model and that will be explored in greater detail later in the book.
A school improvement plan should therefore incorporate the following strands:
1 | Introduction or context statement | the nature and dimensions of the schoolâage range of pupils, location etc. |
2 | Futures perspective | report of futures dialogue and perspectives developed in the school |
3 | Strategic dimension | i) strategic intent statement
ii) strategic plan |
4 | Operational dimension | action plan |
In this book, therefore, we seek to establish new ways of thinking and operationalising school planning. The book is aimed at all those in leadership and management positions in schools who are reviewing and re-examining their planning processes. In particular, it should be an invaluable resource for those defined by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) as âestablished leadersâ or those embarking on âentry to headshipâ through the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) or through programmes such as âNew Visionsâ, aimed at newly appointed heads. In terms of experienced headteachers (âadvanced leadershipâ or âconsultant leadershipâ in NCSL terms) we see the book as a way of refocusing planning in schools from an operational management process, associated with traditional school development planning, to a much more holistic strategic process. For those readers undertaking Masters qualifications or EdD courses we hope to have merged the âtheory for understandingâ and âtheory for actionâ elements of the traditional literature in the field of strategy and planning. It is hoped that governors of schools will continue to find this a key resource in developing their role in planning for the school.
The book is structured so that Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five examine aspects of our planning model, proforma for which are provided in the Appendix. Chapters Six, Seven and Eight present case studies which show how our model has been adapted or presented by a primary and a secondary school and by LEAs.
We are pleased that our publishers have invited us to contribute a completely new edition of this book after several reprints of the original edition. We have been gratified that many school leaders have used our approach and developed it by adding new ideas and incorporating their existing good practice. It has been by hearing about some of these modifications, and working with colleagues in schools, that we have developed our thinking and our model for this book.
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Chapter 2
Building a futures perspective
Introduction
The first dimension of our model of school planning involves creating a framework for futures thinking in the school. At the outset we would state the difficulty of writing a formal futures plan. Rather, we would recommend that âfutures thinkingâ develops through a âfutures dialogueâ so as to build a âfutures perspectiveâ in the school. The futures perspective can provide a âbackclothâ against which short-term and medium-term planning can be set. This requires the leadership capacity of âlooking outsideâ or âlooking to the horizonâ which is fundamental to setting the direction of an organisation and contrasts with the management priority of co-ordinating current activities. Futures thinking involves the school leaders in standing back from the traditio...
