Futures and strategic perspectives in school planning

Abstract

School planning has developed significantly over the last ten years with the universal acceptance of school development planning formats and approaches. However, the move to schoolbased management and greater autonomy has increased the need for schools to take on a wider planning role and responsibility. This paper considers three models of planning. It briefly outlines the original model of school development planning that the authors articulated in 1992 but then examines the need for schools to extend their planning from short-term school development planning to longer-term strategic planning and, most significantly, to incorporate "futures thinking". It then develops a new model which the authors believe should be more responsive to the needs of school planning in the future.

Seeing into the Future: Future Time Orientation as a Moderator of Temporal Distance Effects on Educators' Decisions

“…Research on organizational behavior and managerial strategic planning suggests that the decision maker's FTO (i.e., the extent to which one can "see" into the future) plays a crucial role in planning, envisioning, and creating future goals (e.g., Das, 1986Das, , 1991. Research on educational administration also suggests that the future time perspective is a critical factor in the development of a functional school strategy (e.g., Davies & Ellison, 1998). Some researchers perceive future time perspective as a relatively stable personal trait, suggesting that people differ in their capacity to anticipate, elucidate, and structure the future of their personal and professional lives (e.g., Gjesme, 1979Gjesme, , 1983.…”

Perceived school effectiveness: case study of a Liverpool college

“…Given the fact that schools are, as is the case with many organisations, working under pressure for both physical and human resources and they are forced to meet the demands placed on them by league tables to be seen to succeed. Schools perhaps struggle to meet the self‐managed concept as outlined by Davies and Ellison (1998) who stated:We believe that the reform and restructuring of the education system and especially the focus on self‐managing schools can be considered to encompass two phases. The first phase is delegation to schools, where power and responsibility has been passed to the site level.…”

Organisational learning: building the future of a school

“…This is the first stage of what Argyris and Scho È n (1996) refer to as a strategic conversation between the organisation and its environment. We dealt extensively with the concept of strategic intent in our previous article (Davies and Ellison, 1998) so we will not repeat that discussion of the literature here. We would emphasise, however, that it is not a list of 50 or so hopes and aspirations which may have the title of strategic intentions ± such an approach is akin to a wish list.…”

“…Our reconceptualisation of the planning process (Davies and Ellison, 1997, 1998, 1999 produced a planning model which suggests that, in a dynamic environment, schools should engage in three types of planning activity which occur concurrently and which interact and reinforce each other. These are shown in Figure 1.…”