EDUC 254: Educational Planning

• EDUC 254 is the course code for Educational Planning

Session 2 Objectives

• Define educational planning from various perspectives
• Explain the need for planning
• Discuss the nature of planning

Planning Definitions

• George R. Terry defines planning as selecting and relating facts, making assumptions about the future, and visualizing proposed activities necessary to achieve desired results
• Dalton E. Mcfarland describes planning as an executive function that anticipates, influences, and controls change
• Heinz Weihrich & Harold Koontz state planning involves selecting a mission, setting objectives, and choosing actions from alternative future courses

Educational Planning Defined

• Educational planning is a disciplined effort that produces decisions and actions to shape what the school is, what it does, and why, with a focus on the future

Why Plan?

• Planning improves the chances of reaching possible outcomes
• Enables schools to prepare for contingencies that prevent goals from being attained
• Provides a framework for orderly growth and progress of the school
• Creates a strategy for resource allocation to meet the school's goals
• Helps prioritize the use of limited human and economic resources
• Facilitates the accomplishment of short, medium, and long-range goals
• Builds on the strong parts of a program and improves weak areas
• Secures agreement in the school community about actions and methods
• Establishes a major direction
• Concentrates resources to maximize benefits to stakeholders
• Structures an approach to anticipate the future
• Designs a tool to find the best future for the school and the best path to it

Consequences of No Educational Planning

• Consider consequences if there is no educational planning

Nature of Planning

• Planning is goal-oriented
• Planning is an intellectual or rational process
• Planning is a primary function
• Planning is all-pervasive
• Planning is forward-looking
• Planning is a continuous process
• Planning is an integrated process
• Planning involves choice

Planning is Goal-Oriented

• Planning helps to achieve set goals or objectives
• It has no value unless it contributes to achieving the desired goals
• Well-defined goals are essential for effective planning

Planning is Intellectual or Rational

• Planning requires managers to use imagination, creativity, and analytical skills
• It requires foresight and sound judgement
• Planning is the outcome of an intellectual or balanced process

Planning is a Primary Function

• Planning is the initial activity in the management process
• All other functions of management can be carried out effectively if properly planned
• Planning precedes the execution of all other managerial functions

Planning is All-Pervasive

• Planning is an essential aspect of management at all execution levels
• Top-level managers prepare long-term plans for the organization's overall objectives
• Middle-level managers formulate departmental and functional plans for the medium term
• Lower-level managers prepare operating and short-term plans
• The scope, extent, and nature of planning vary at different levels of management

Planning is Forward-Looking

• Planning is concerned with anticipating the future
• Predicting future trends and preparing for them is integral to planning
• Accurate forecasting is essential for planning

Planning is Continuous

• Planning continues as long as an organization exists
• Plans may be updated, modified, or replaced
• New sets of goals are set for every new situation
• Plans are changed or modified but never abandoned

Planning is Integrated

• Plans made at different levels are independent and interrelated
• Plans should be well-coordinated to achieve set organizational goals with a timeline

Planning Involves Choice

• Planning involves decision-making and selecting a suitable course of action
• Alternatives are available for achieving a goal, however, the best alternative has to be selected
• Plans are decisions made after evaluating alternative courses of action

Benefits of Planning

• Clearly defines the purpose
• Establishes realistic goals and objectives consistent with the vision-mission and within a defined time frame
• Develops a sense of ownership among stakeholders
• Ensures the most effective use of school resources
• Provides a base from which progress can be measured
• Brings together everyone's best and most reasoned efforts
• Provides clearer focus
• Bridges teaching staff and administrators, and builds strong teamwork
• Increases productivity among school personnel

Features of a Good Planning Process

• Stimulates change and improvement
• Helps figure out what will happen and how it should happen
• Raises awareness about what is being done and why
• Builds a trail of activities over time to assess what has worked and what has not
• Produces a blueprint, road map, or recipe to be used
• Decreases fear about change and its results

Planning Purposes

• It helps an organization do a better job
• It ensures members work toward the same goals
• It helps to assess and adjust direction in response to a changing environment

Significance of Planning

• Focuses attention on objectives
• Offsets uncertainty and risk
• Provides direction
• Provides guidelines for decision-making
• Increases organizational effectiveness
• Provides efficiency in operating
• Ensures better coordination
• Facilitates control
• Encourages innovation and creativity
• Facilitates delegation

Planning and Management Levels

Types of Plans Based on Organizational Level

• Strategic plans establish overall objectives and analyze environmental factors affecting organizations; applicable to the entire organization, developed by top management with board consultation
• Tactical plans indicate actions for major departments and subunits to execute strategic plans; more concerned with getting things done, decisions made by middle-level managers
• Operational plans are stated in specific and quantitative terms and serve as the department manager's guide to day-to-day operations involving shorter time frames and lesser risks

Types of Plans Based on Frequency of Use

• Include single-use and standings plans

Single Use Plans

• Includes programs, budgets and projects
• Programs are large-scale, single-use plans that coordinate complex activities to achieve goals and outline steps, resources and timelines
• A program is a sequence of activities designed to implement policies and accomplish objectives, and it may combine policies, procedures, rules, budgets, task assignments, etc
• Budgets outline numerical results for a future period and may be expressed in financial terms or units of product and should involve top management
• Projects helps in precise allocation of duties and effective control and easy implementation of the plan

Standing Plans

• Include policies, procedures and rules
• Policies are the most general form of a standing plan
• Policies specify broad parameters within which organization members operate providing guidance in decision making and define boundaries for achieving objectives
• Procedures are a chronological sequence of steps to achieve an objective, outlining steps and guiding actions
• Rules define what should or should not be done in a particular situation, helping ensure employees behave predictably and are rigid and definite plans without deviation

The Planning Process:

• Steps include analyzing opportunities, establishing objectives, determining planning premises, identifying alternatives, evaluating, selection, implementation and review

Extended Model of the Planning Process

• Being aware of opportunity inlight of the competitors and markets
• Setting objectives of what achievements are
• Considering planning premises both internal and external
• Identifying alternatives to accomplish objectives
• Comparing alternatives in light of goals
• Choosing alternatives by selecting courses of action
• Formulating supporting/supplemental plans
• Numberizing plans by making budgets, sales volume etc.

Prerequisites for Effective Planning

• Establishing the right climate
• Having clear and specific objectives
• Planning Premises
• Initiative at the top level
• Participation in the process
• Good communication
• Integration of short & long term plans
• Open System Approach
• Management Information System

Limitations of Planning

• Lack of accurate information
• Time-consuming process
• Expensive
• Inflexibility
• Resistance to change
• Environmental constraints
• Lack of ability and commitment
• False sense of security
• Reluctance to establish goals

Strategic Planning

• Process prepares the best response to circumstances of the organizations environment whether or not circumstances are known

Strategic Includes

• Being "strategic" means, being transparent about the organization’s objectives, being aware of the organization's, resources including both into being consciously responsive to a dynamic environment

Characteristics of a Planning Process

• Disciplined process calls for a certain order and pattern to keep it focused and productive
• Analytical raises questions that help planners examine experience
• Decisive incorporates fundamental decisions and actions

Strategic Thinking

• Strategic planning is useful if it supports strategic thinking and leads to strategic management
• Strategic Thinking asks “Are we doing the right thing?” and evaluates using specific requirements

3 Requirements of Strategic Thinking

• A definite purpose in mind
• An understanding of the environment
• Creativity in developing responses to environmental forces

Plan Contents

• A Strategic Plan should cover 2 to 5 years and include:
• Mission Statement is the reason for creation describing its operation
• Vision Statement presents what it hopes to become, motivating stakeholders
• Values inform how a grand vision is achieved revealing the organization's qualities
• Government Mandates identify policies and regulations to adhere to and ensure compliance to avoid penalties or closure

In the Plan

• Need Assessments define the needs fulfilled to promote work
• Goals strive to meet needs of community
• Organizational Assessments reveals strengths and weaknesses for focus

SWOT Analysis for Strategic Planning

• Strengths are attributes helpful to achieving the mission
• Weaknesses are harmful
• Opportunities are external conditions helpful
• Threats are external conditions damaging to the mission

Strategies

• The strategies will achieve the goals and lead the vision of what the organization should become

Plan Outline

• Executive Summary
• Organizational Background
• Mandates
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Values
• Mission
• Environmental Assessment
• Issue Identification
• Goals - Objectives - Strategies
• Evaluation Plan
• Vision of the Future
• Strategy Implementation

Summary

• A plan is a set of decisions about what to do, why, and how
• Strategic planning implies that some decisions and actions are more important than others
• Tough decisions about what is important help to achieve organizational success