Manual for Producing a School Development Plan

Manual for Producing a School Development Plan

This manual /work book is a procedural guide for principals or head teachers and planning teams interested in improvement and change in their schools through development planning.

Special Note & Instructions for CPs :

• This manual is adopted from Module “School Development Planning” which is in publication process at IIEP, UNESCO on behalf of ANTRIEP.
• Please go through all the activities given in the manual. In most cases, the space is provided for writing your responses. You can use additional sheets where needed

Plan to Plan: Preparing for School Development Planning

Before embarking on a development planning process, there are three activities you can carry out to prepare for the process:

1. Establish a school development planning team.
2. Discuss the readiness of the school for development planning.
3. Decide who will be involved and the timeframe for producing the plan.

Activity 1: Establish a school planning team

The first step you should take is to establish a team of people who will work with you on producing the school development plan. It is important that the team is representative of the key stakeholders so you could consider inviting one or more persons from the following groups:

• Teachers
• Support staff
• Parents
• Students

You should write down in the place provided below a brief and clear statement of the Terms of Reference (TORs) for the team so that everyone has a shared understanding of what will be involved.

A team of about 8 is appropriate so you may wish to have 2 from each stakeholder group with the principal as team leader. A good idea would be to request each group to nominate their representatives so that the spirit of democracy is planted from the beginning. Once the team is established it is time to call the first meeting.

Activity 2: Readiness Checklist

You can use this checklist as a tool to identify key issues that can help or impede the process. It would be advisable to ask a number of people or the whole team to complete this checklist and use it as a basis for discussion in your first team meeting.

Statements	Yes/No
The stakeholders’ input will be available
The school data will be ready to be used in decision-making processes
The school recognizes that a change in one part of the organization usually calls for a change in another part
The school is knowledgeable about what other schools are doing to achieve change
The school leadership is knowledgeable about current trends in educational reform
The school leadership is effectively managing human and fiscal resources
The school is not passing through some critical period or activity e.g. annual audit or exam
The commitment and permission from system authorities is available

Case study examples: Planning Responsibility

Nepal

The school has developed a 5 year rolling plan. District Education Office conducts short term training on the preparation of plan to the head teachers and teachers of different schools. The teachers are oriented about the concept of planning from a team of experts. Then these teachers go to their schools and start planning.

In the case of this school, the SMC members, teachers and PTA members sat together and discussed on the areas of necessity and the rough estimate of financial involvement. Then the teachers prepared the first draft plan and discussed in the staff meeting in the first stage. With the ideas of the staffs the plan was revised and discussed in the staff meeting. After the revision it was forwarded to the SMC. The SMC with advisory and PTA members discussed and approved the plan.

Bangladesh

Ministry of Education prepares the development plan with the help of the policy makers and educationists for the secondary level and distributes to the government schools.

It contains clear objective related to the development of infrastructure, teacher behavior, learner absenteeism and learner achievement. It is being used as an instrument for mobilization and monitoring.

Activity 3: Who?  When?  Why

The following template can be used by the team to decide Who will be involved in various aspects of the planning and When it should occur:

Planning Phase	Who will be involved?	When?	Why?
Visioning Exercise
Situation Analysis
Objectives formulation
Developing an Action Plan

Where do we want to go?

Activity 4: Visioning Exercise

A vision of a good school has always been stressed as a major element in leadership and planning. You need to engage key stakeholders in the planning process right from this phase.

Case study example: How Vision Statement was developed?

Philippines

The vision of 2003-2006 development plan is “to produce quality learners in a conducive learning environment through effective and efficient teachers as well as strong partnership with parents and the community.” This vision statement is a product of consensus of the various stakeholders that participated in the planning meetings. In these meetings, the participants were accorded the opportunity to sound off their opinions, comments, and suggestions and work in small groups to formulate a vision for the school. The different versions of the vision statements were distilled by a small group and translated it into a mission statement as follows: “to provide learners with the basic education in order to lay the foundation for life long learning and services for the common good.”

Developing a School Vision

With the help of the following steps you will be able to develop a shared vision of what the school should be like and how it should function in the future. The purpose of the activity is to develop a school vision.

                                                                                                       

Step 1: Convene a stakeholders’ visioning workshop. Ensure that all key stakeholders are appropriately represented. The workshop should include the members of your School Development Committee and some other stakeholder representatives as well.

Step 2: Encourage participants to respond to the following question:

What should be the characteristics of a good school? (Ask participants to give 8 characteristics).   

Step 3: Stretch the participants’ thinking as much as possible by asking further questions to explore important themes. Some suggested questions are:

What should a good school be doing in terms of relations with parents, co-curricular activities, staff development etc.?

What should be in the curriculum of a good school?

What should be the qualities of a graduate from a good school school?

Step 4:  Collate and categorize all the responses.

Step 5:  Review the collated ideas and write a vision statement which captures the most significant ideas about what a good school should be like. The vision statement should be relatively short; it could be as short as one line but no more than 3 or 4 lines of writing.

Now carefully consider that statement in relation to your own school by ensuring that it makes sense for your particular school. Now share it with all stakeholders for their review and comments. Incorporate their feedback and distribute a modified version to stakeholders. The resulting statement will serve as the vision for your school.

Note: Vision is not a static thing .It keeps on evolving.  Vision once articulated does not mean that it will stay there. In one case from India, the head teacher said that “visioning exercise was a regular feature with the staff”.

Where are we now?  Situation Analysis 

Activity 5 :

This is a crucial phase in school development planning. If you are doing planning for your own school, you may feel that you have good idea of the situation. However, we strongly recommend that you carry out a careful and systematic examination of the present situation with participation of the stakeholders. The output of this activity when compared with the school vision from the previous activity will help you to identify the gaps and goals for school improvement.

Case study example: How the school reviewed the situation?

Philippines

The school development planning process usually starts with a review of the school’s profile­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ including enrollment, school program/curriculum, community support, trends and opportunities, and problems and issues.

The school has conducted three educational researches aimed at helping improve it. They are as follows: “‘Parents’ perception on Public Elementary education and their Participation in School Activities,” “Effectiveness of an Adapted Design in Teaching ‘Measuring Air Pressure,” “Improving the Reading Ability of Grade 1 Pupils”

Internal and External Analysis

You need to carry out an analysis of both the internal and external situation of the school. It is quite helpful to collect hard and soft data on both of these dimensions. Hard data refers to numerical data, official regulations or policy documents whereas soft data refers to people’s expectations and opinions.

You may find following matrix useful when considering data sources.

	Soft Data	Hard Data
Internal	·         Teachers ·         Students ·         Committees ·         Other staff	·         Students results ·         Staff reports ·         Minutes of meetings ·         Committees reports ·         Inventories of books and resources
External	·         Parents ·         Community members ·         People from placement organizations	·         BOGs  minutes of meetings ·         System policies ·         Government policies ·         International commitments e.g. MDGs, EFA, Child rights ·         Tracking of graduates

 Carefully consider the following questions while preparing for this activity.

• What aspects of the school will you will focus on? (You may start with whole picture and then zero in on your areas of priority).
• How you will be doing the analysis? (You need to decide on sources of data and tools for collection of data).
• Who will be doing the analysis?

 The following steps will guide you through which SWOT and PESTE can be done in conjunction with each other.

Environmental Scan (PESTE) and SWOT

This technique will help you to identify trends or forces outside the school that can affect or shape the course of actions undertaken the school. It will also help you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the school.

Step 1: Identify, with the help of stakeholders, the trends that are emerging that will have more influence in the coming 3-5 years. Different political, economic, social and technological forces can have impact on schools. Identification of trends in those fields can be very helpful. In the following box, one example of a trend in education is quoted from the case studies.

Case study example: Trends in Education:

 Nepal

Pre-primary: The concept and practices regarding Early Childhood Development and pre-primary education are emerging as important developments, but they are still not part of the formal national education structure.

The following template will be useful for recording the trends identified by the participants:

Politics	Economic	Social	Technology	Education

 Step 2: From the trends/ forces you have identified what trends are most likely to impact your school and how.

The trends likely to impact your school positively can be marked as ‘opportunities’ and the trends likely to have a negative affect on your school can be marked as ‘threats’.  

Trends	Opportunity/Threat

Step 3: This step will help you to develop understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the school also familiar to you from SWOT.  

Strengths are the characteristics that allow the school to take advantage of opportunities or reduce the impact of barriers and while weaknesses are the characteristics that could stand in the way of the school taking advantage of opportunities or reducing the impact of barriers.

Case study example: Strengths of the school

Nepal

Team Sprit among the teachers; the teachers are dedicated and are hard working towards the development of the school. Most of them are local (9 teachers are form the same VDC and 9 from neighbor VDCs and municipality out of 23) he feels this is important factor for teachers dedication.

Student motivation and labour. The students have respect towards the teachers and they obey the teachers. They are also motivated by the prospect of good achievement.

SMC member and the parents attach their prestige with the hard work of the school and its success: They are proud that the school has a place prestige in rural Bhaktapur. All the members of the managing committee, PTA members, teachers and parents speak in one voice that there is a teamwork, unity and involvement of all stakeholders in making important decision. And there is transparency in the financial and administrative activities.

The school has been doing better rapidly in terms of schools leaving Examination results: The pass rate of this school in SLC in 2001, 2002 and 2003 are about 30, 59 % and 67 % receptively. The national pas percent of SLC has remained about 32 in these three years. Currently this school is in the fourth position among the public secondary schools of Bhaktapur. Extra coaching classes since 2002 has helped the school to achieve better. The school invites experts from outsides to ensure that the students do better.

The school maintains a regular calendar for co-curricular and extra curricular activities: It conducts quiz, debate, spelling oratory contest regularly from                   May to October 2003. The school stands first and third in oratory and folk song competition in the resource centre based primary school contest. Similarly at secondary level it stands first among 16 schools from the neighboring VDCs organised by Krishna Baukala Memorial Trust. This school organized a science exhibition on the occasion of school anniversary every year.

Case study example: Weaknesses of the school

India

Teachers and head teachers felt that ensuring learning of quality for 535 students was difficult nay impossible with just three teachers inclusive of the head teachers (one Siksha Mitra had joined just a fortnight back). Low literacy and poverty had turned parents oblivious of their important role in the wholesome development of there wards’ personality. Teachers alone could not be able to do much.

Another difficulty was shortage of space. Three regular classrooms for five classes were inadequate. Rooms were small. Occupancy of space per child was poor. They must have ample space to move about.   

You can ask following simple questions:

• What are our current strengths?  (Write down key strengths) 

• What are our current weaknesses?

Step 4:

The out put of step 2 & 3 can be organized using the following matrix (SWOT)

	Strengths	Weaknesses
Internal
External	Opportunities	Threats

Step 5: Analyze the above matrix according to the following combinations and develop options/goals/directions for the school.

1. Strengths-opportunities:  This will lead you to identify options for maximizing the strengths of school. ( write down at least one strategy)

2. Strengths-threats:  This will lead you to identify options for reducing the impact of threats. ( write down at least one strategy)

3. Weaknesses-opportunities: This will lead you to identify options for compensating weaknesses with the help of opportunities. ( write down at least one strategy)

4. Weaknesses-threats:  This will lead you to identify areas that you must avoid. ( write down at least one strategy)

Activity 6: Document analysis

Identify the documents that could provide information on the current situation and carry out an analysis of them. The issues raised in the SWOT analysis can be a useful guide in identification of documents and developing a framework of analysis. For example, if you wish to explore school-parent relationships the following documents could be a useful resource for objective analysis of the situation:

• ToRs of PTA ( if it has any formal structure)
• SMC record ( showing parents representation and contribution in the body)
• Record of complaints lodged by parents
• Minutes of meetings with the parents
• Applications for school leaving certificates

The following examples show how school records can be helpful in a situation analysis.

Case study example: Using Student Assessment Data

Bangladesh

Review of the performance of the students was a common practice after the examinations. If such review showed any unsatisfactory performance necessary steps were taken. One example can be shown here. After the second term examination in 2002, the review meeting observed that 37 students of grade IV (out of 89) could not pass in mathematics. The teachers identified two reasons. Firstly, the respective teacher did not take much care to the weaker students, and secondly, the students were not much attentive and punctual in their mathematics classes. The head teacher firstly asked the respective teacher to show cause regarding the occurrence. He was advised to be careful in this regard. The issue was also discussed in the SMC meeting. The SMC meeting took three measures for this. The respective parents were informed about the concern of the SMC. The teachers had a meeting with the respective parents and asked them to take care at home.

Case study example: Meticulously Prepared school records

India

I found that the school record has been meticulously prepared, the records of the past five years showed zero percentage dropout. The only children who left the school were transfer case who were given transfer certificate (TC) on leaving the school, as per administrative account no children had left the school on any other reason.

How to get to our vision?

Activity 7: Goals and Priorities

At this stage a careful analysis is needed to determine what the gaps are between future vision (desired state) and current reality. This may result in long wish list of areas you would like to see improved. However, a small number of priorities must be selected as it is not possible to do every thing at once and resources are usually scarce. After establishing priorities the feasibility of goals should be considered in terms of availability of resources, time, money and people, etc.

The following process can be used to determine goals and priorities:

Step 1: Ask each person (who has been part of the whole process) to write 5 goals for the school that should be pursued over the next 1-3 years in order to achieve the vision. (Write down)

Step 2: Collect all those ideas and make a comprehensive list of those goals and the areas of improvement they relate to.

Step 3:  Review the goals according the following criteria:

• Are the goals realistic and desirable?
• Do the goals reflect the issues surfaced in situation analysis? ( Stakeholders’ analysis, PESTE, SWOT, document analysis)
• Do the goals match with the vision and values of the school?
• Do the goals maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses and take advantage of opportunities while minimizing threats.

Step 4:  Make a list of goals in order of priority consensus.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Step 5: Select the number of areas and goals you wish to work on in next six months or one year. The number of goals your school can effectively work on will depend on the complexity of the goals as well as the capacity of the school in terms of resources.

Case study example: Objectives of SDP

 Nepal

The plan has clearly specified the objectives. They are:

To provide school education to all school-age children of its area,

To upgrade the achievement level of students as high as 100 percent and maintain it,

To make physical facilities favorable to help the teaching,

To introduce it as a model school in the district.

 Sri Lanka

In relation to the mission they have developed the following aims for the school.

1. Teachers work according to the code of ethics.
2. To design activities within the school to improve innovative skills of children.
3. To keep high standards at public examination results and student performance.
4. To make school plant pleasant.
5. To train children for a life style which value local heritage
6. To create a learning environment in the school to learn English language.
7. All the students in the school getting the computer training and use of computers as a learning tool.
8. To build daughters who love the school through good teacher-pupil relations.

Activity 8 : Developing an Action Plan

Step 1 : For each goal you have identified, assign a group to complete the following activity:

Example:

Goal 1: To develop school – parent relationships

Objective #1:    To understand current level of relationships with parents

Objective #2:    To constitute fully functional PTA by the end of next year

Objective #3:    To involve the community about school functions

Following the example, convert the goals into objectives. Each objective should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound)

Step 2: Action planning

Our knowledge of best practice from the case studies reminds us to be conscious of the availability of resources and clarity of the roles i.e. who will be doing what?

Break each objective into a small number of tasks and allocate resources accordingly.

Action Steps	Who will do it?	By When?	Resources required?

Step 3: Planning for monitoring

One of the most important lesson from principles of good practice is to plan for monitoring and make it part of the action plan. What you have to do is to develop criteria (or indicators) of success for each activity. For example, if the activity is meeting with the parents, the number parents invited and the number who actually attended can serve as indicators.

Case study example: Monitoring Mechanism

India

The school has constituted as many as 38 committees. These are related to coordination, school calendar, admission, time-table, examination, discipline, mess, co-curricular activities, audio-visual aids, water, maintenance and repair, vehicle maintenance, electricity, library, health and hygiene, publicity, cultural programs, local purchase, assembly, career guidance, safety and security, pace-setting activities, information technology, public relations, sports, etc. Depending upon the requirement, one or more than one teacher was included in a particular committee. The principal himself was a member of seven committees. The students were represented in three committees. The mess committee consisted of all house masters (teachers), staff nurse, school prefect (student), all house captains (students), and the mess helper. All house captains were represented in the safety and security committee, and the school prefect in the maintenance and repair committee.

Case study example: Meetings for Monitoring

Malaysia

Besides effective planning, successful leaders also need to practice successful monitoring of the school programs, teachers and students. It is observed that Ahmad has a plan and the importance of plan is also communicated frequently through planned activities. The head would also have frequent meetings with his assistant head teachers to ask about the development and progress of the various programs.

The case studies showed that a strong mechanism of monitoring exists in the successful schools. That mechanism clearly identifies that ‘who will monitor’ (principal/section heads/committees) but more clarity can be sought by using the following template.

Action Steps	What to monitor?	How to monitor it?	Who will monitor?

Step 4: Putting the pieces together

Action Steps	Action Planning			Monitoring Plan
	Who?	When?	Resources	What to monitor	When to monitor	Who?

This activity will bring all pieces of your school development plan together. After preparation of the plan you need to publish it in the form of a document, modify it (when needed) and use it as road map for improvement.

The school action plan is sometimes called the school calendar. The following is an example of a ‘school calendar’.

Case study example: Contents of Action Plan

India

The annual calendar of school activities depicted academic activities, milestones, unit tests and indicators of continuous evaluation, celebration of special days, inter-house competition and date for teacher-parent meets.

Step 5: Quality audit

You can use the following check list to do a quality audit of the action plan.

	Yes /No
Are objectives/actions aligned with the vision/values of the school?
Will completing the actions produce the intended outcome?
Does implementation of the plan require any change in the management structure?
Are the resources required for actions in place?
Can progress be measured?
Is the action plan likely to improve students’ learning?
Will this plan be shared with all stakeholders?

                                     

The case studies of successful schools show different patterns regarding the process of school development planning. However, there are some common themes:

1. Successful schools have a visible and explicit plan for improvement developed through their own processes. For example: Sri Lanka, Pakistan & Philippines.
2. The plan is developed by the school with the support of the system. Nepal is a good example of this.
3. No systematic and formal process of planning exists throughout the whole system though leadership at school level has a clear understanding of the future plans and shares those goals clearly. For example: India and  BRAC schools in Bangladesh.
4. Some systems develop the goals and the school does action planning. Example: Pakistan 

The whole idea of school development planning is not simply to finish the document and say that you have ‘done it’; but to implement it. The plan should not be viewed as a static thing but rather it is a living, breathing document that can be changed as needed. Be sure to make changes if goals are not relevant or no longer needed. A good way to implement a plan is to integrate it into all activities of the school or in other words make it an integral part of the culture of the school (an important lesson from good practices).

Conclusion

In this module we have given you an overview of school development planning, provided you with some good practices of planning and outlined a process for you to follow in order to produce a development plan for your school.

We hope that you have enjoyed working through the module and we trust that you will apply the ideas to achieve continuous school improvement for the benefit of your students and your school community.

Babur , M.; Safdar , Q. & Retallick , J. (In press). IIEP, UNESCO on behalf of ANTRIEP (Asian Network of Training and Research Institutions in Educational Planning)