How to Design Your School Development Plan!
What is School Development Plan (SDP)? Why Every School must have it?
School Development Plan is a must-have instrument for school to guide their improvement plan and actions to achieve the high-level strategies or strategic goals. SDP always comes with improvement in the certain aspects of school operations, stemming from the baseline analysis. The baseline operation and results are key indicators for the new SDP to define what areas to repeat and what new areas to add values for the key stakeholders(parents and students). SDP is also a roadmap for actions and results to be monitored and evaluated for designing a new SDP. Can a school go without the SDP? There is no evidence of failure schools to operate without SDP. Some schools may sustain their operation without the SDP. However, many research findings on SDP to positively impact on school's sustainable growth, only with the effective and comprehensive SDP design and alignment of staff' performance with SDP's objectives and targets. Therefore, it is still possible for some other schools to operate without the SDP but it less competitive in the longer-run operations, comparing with the schools operating based on the SDP. We strongly encouraged the school leaders to form a team to design the SDP and put forward to actions.
The main component of SDP is financial aspect which must be secure to support the SDP initiatives to add values for school and their stakeholders. Sufficient funds and strong financial health will guarantee the SDP uninterrupted operation. However, school boards must decide on the percentage for fund allocations on the major improvement in the SDP which can jeopardize other functional operations. In the financial aspect, major investment on assets is bound with the reductions on profit earning and retaining. However, school must be attentive and decisive on how to use the investment funds for major improvements as indicated in the initial phase of analysis for area to improve. For example, there is a strong competitor school to pop up and the likelihood that the school facility will be undermined by the rival school, the major investment on physical asset to modernize the facility is most recommended for school boards to approve. Another aspect to design the SDP is internal strength and weakness to inform the key improvement targets for achieving the SDP objectives and the School's Strategic Goals. According to the Norton & Kaplan (1992) in their Balanced Scorecard model, the internal process is essential for creating the value and it is argued to continuously improve the work processes for operational excellence. There is a suggested approach for process analysis which was written in earlier posts. The last essential component is competitor / threat that will impact on school operation. From the triangulation, school leaders can define the new initiatives to improve their teaching & learning service quality and supporting functions for retaining and for recruiting more students.
What should be in your SDP? After collating all analytic data in financial, internal and competitor aspects, the SDP teams must create a format to structure the key components of SDP, namely improvement areas, objectives, targets and measurements, actions, timelines and funds. The format structure must be designed in a coherent and cohesive form that will link actions with targets, key measures and objectives in each area of improvement. Where are the key improvement areas coming from? How the school leaders / teams determine which improvement areas to be listed in the SDP? Key Improvement Areas are the so-called value creation for school. From the analytical data of your financial aspect, internal strength and weakness and competitor, school can decide which areas to improve to align with your school's strategic goals and vision. The improvement in SDP must create more values for key school's stakeholders to inspire and to arouse desires of staying with the schools. To be more precise, schools must synthesize the inputs of parent's and student's satisfaction through survey and in-person group interviews. Understanding their needs and their perceived needs will enhance school's development plan to meet and to exceed their needs. In all, SDP must be structured in a form with explicit Key Improvement Areas, Objectives, Targets & Measures, Action, Timeline and Funds. To add more concise improvement initiatives for value creation, school must synthesize the parent's and student's needs through the survey and interview.
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