School Strategy

School strategy can be seen as:

• A compelling narrative: Strategy acts as an essential part of your story that connects your past, present and future; it must align with and enhance vision and values, capture the essence of how to make our vision real, and make the complex seem simple. It must translate into a set of key aspirations for this journey that help us to define our priorities, flow across programs, institutions and structures, and influence the roles and daily functions of every team and individual member of the school.
• A set of fundamental ideas about translating ideas into action: Strategy also forms a part of your plan to go in the right direction to ensure your story continues in the way that you want; it comprises critical directional ideas and therefore usually it’s about “the way we do things here” and the reasons why we do them more than what we actually do (which will emerge later in more detailed planning). In this respect, structures, resources and finances are means to achieving strategy, not strategy in themselves. You will inevitably raise the need for resources – a strategy, however, is not operationally instrumental. Therefore, it is not a person or a role or a building or fundraising activity per se.

If school strategy is both a narrative and a plan, then, what does it look like? In contemporary school strategic thinking, a strategy will usually begin with the vision for “Our School” (what it might become), it will identify the key pillars through which the Vision will be realised, the handful of key ideas as to how the Vision will be realised across the pillars (the strategy itself), and culminate with a clear statement about the competencies of “Our Graduates” (the most important and defining objectives of the whole educational process). 

School strategy is a set of choices about the compelling narrative and future planning of the school that is inspired by thinking that imagines the future; strategic competency enables us to make this thinking real.

Let us consider, then, the elements of school strategic thinking and practice that might sit behind such a strategy.

Strategic intent comprises the critical context that gives the rationale and purpose for what you want to do, the binding ideas about that handful of trajectories through which you might travel to realise your intent, and the goals you might set for specific projects and initiatives, supported by detailed logistical planning as to how and when you will achieve these goals and what you will use to measure progress. 

Strategic core describes the essential structure for the vision, vocabulary, value proposition, and the velocity of change that define the success of a school in realising its preferred future. There must be enough to bring shared understanding without constricting the agency of those who will bring it to life. 

Strategic strength is founded on ensuring that your strategy is contextually informed, mission driven, future oriented, culturally aligned, and deliberately structured to ensure the strategic architecture is embedded into the fabric of the school. As you build the strategic strength of your community by aligning culture to intent in a way that draws a line that connects yesterday, today and tomorrow, the focus for your thinking about your strategy and the strength it brings to your community focus should be much more about the “why?” (90% of your attention) than the “how?” (the remaining 10%).

Strategic capital in a school means the extent to which the school’s community provides a mandate for and helps to support the continuing development of this strategic intent. 

Strategic capacity refers to the sum of this strategic capital and the extent to which the key agents for change can utilise it to see above, beyond and through to the preferred future and use the school’s strategy to guide, support and encourage those around them to lift their heads out of the needs of their immediate concerns to attend to the important work of creating and building the future together.

Strategic goals are best employed sparsely and in a concentrated fashion – the fewer the better, usually, and certainly no more than 5-10 in total. We often talk about the “business card test”: can you fit all of your strategic goals onto the back of a business card? If not, then how realistic are you in your expectations that people in our community can identify, define, and remember these goals? 

Strategic initiatives are those handful of reforms, projects, and institutions that reach deep into the life of the school to make that desired difference that shapes the future of the school’s culture and community - especially the learning outcomes of the students, while the rest of the school and its divisions continue to operate on a daily basis to realise the school mission.

Strategic planning is the cascade of related and aligned documents by which the school operationalises and evaluates its progress in implementing its strategic intent. It usually comprises the following:

• Strategic framework defining the ethos, mission, values, culture, vision, and strategic trajectory of the school as a 21C learning community
• Educational philosophy outlining the school’s approach to education and its long-term vision for its future in embodying the strategic framework, especially in relation to its ethos
• Educational framework that identifies the school’s graduate profile, how this is embedded in all student learning activity, how this is supported by staff, and the professional learning approaches to support staff in this, and tools for anticipating, evaluating, and reporting on educational success
• People and culture plan that describes the organisational development of the school under the strategic framework
• Governance and leadership charters that provide agreed principles under which the school will be led
• Strategic project plans managing the key educational and community initiatives that will focus the school’s energy on achievement of its intent
• Operational plans governing daily operations and their interaction with the strategic framework; 
• Master facilities plan describing the school’s intended approach to providing infrastructure, facilities that locate the school’s strategic framework in physical and virtual spaces
• Long-term financial planning that details how the school will resource its vision
• Risk management planning that explains how the school will identify and mitigate risk in its community
• Advancement plan that describes the school’s plan for growth, revenue and community engagement through enrolments, philanthropy, partnerships, and advancement

School strategy is a set of choices about the compelling narrative and future planning of the school that is inspired by thinking that imagines the future; strategic competency enables us to make this thinking real.