APDP Module 9 Strategic Planning and Visioning
“Kia tū rangatira ai te kura – kia puāwai ai ngā ākonga.”
“For the school to stand strong and proud – for the students to flourish.”
Module Objectives:
- Define the key components of a compelling school vision and mission.
- Articulate the importance of strategic planning in achieving educational goals and school improvement.
- Apply a systematic process for developing strategic plans within a school context.
- Contribute to the creation of a shared and inspiring vision for their kura.
- Identify effective methods for aligning team and departmental goals with the overarching school strategic plan.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of strategic initiatives and adapt plans as needed.
Strategic planning and visioning are fundamental to effective school leadership. They provide the compass and roadmap for your kura’s future, ensuring that all efforts are aligned towards common, aspirational goals. As a school leader, your role in translating vision into actionable plans and fostering a shared sense of purpose is critical.
Understanding Vision and Mission:
A vision is an aspirational picture of what your school aims to become in the future – its dream. It should be inspiring, clear, and concise, guiding all decisions. A mission statement, on the other hand, describes the school’s core purpose and how it will achieve its vision. It defines “what we do” and “why we do it.” Together, they provide the foundation for strategic direction.
The Importance of Strategic Planning:
Strategic planning is the process of defining your school’s strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It involves:
- Setting Priorities: Identifying the most critical areas for development and improvement.
- Resource Allocation: Directing financial, human, and physical resources effectively.
- Accountability: Establishing clear measures of success and responsibilities.
- Adaptability: Providing a framework to respond to changing educational landscapes and community needs.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Ensuring that the school community (students, staff, whānau, Board of Trustees, community) has a voice in shaping the future.
The Strategic Planning Process:
While specific models vary, a typical strategic planning cycle involves several key stages:
- Environmental Scan/Discovery: Understanding the current state of the school – its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis). This involves gathering data on student achievement, community demographics, resource availability, and the broader educational context.
- Vision and Mission Review/Development: Reaffirming or collaboratively crafting the school’s aspirational vision and defining its core purpose.
- Goal Setting: Establishing clear, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) strategic goals that move the school closer to its vision.
- Strategy Development: Brainstorming and selecting the specific actions, initiatives, and approaches that will be implemented to achieve each goal.
- Action Planning: Detailing who will do what, by when, and with what resources. This is where the strategic plan translates into operational steps.
- Implementation and Monitoring: Putting the plan into action and regularly tracking progress against established metrics.
- Review and Evaluation: Periodically assessing the effectiveness of the plan, celebrating successes, identifying areas for improvement, and making necessary adjustments. This often leads back to a new planning cycle.
Aligning Team Goals with School Strategy:
As leaders, your role is crucial in bridging the gap between the school’s strategic plan and the day-to-day work of your teams. This involves:
- Communicating the school’s vision and strategic goals clearly to your team.
- Facilitating discussions that allow your team to understand their contribution to these goals.
- Collaboratively setting team goals that directly support the strategic plan.
- Providing resources and support for your team to implement their actions.
- Monitoring team progress and providing feedback that links back to the broader school strategy.
Task:
Reflecting on and Contributing to Strategic Vision:
- Reflection (Individual): Consider your current school’s vision and strategic plan. What do you find most inspiring or impactful about it? What is one area you believe your team could contribute to more effectively to help achieve a specific strategic goal?
- Visioning Application (Forum Discussion with Learning Partner): With your learning partner, discuss the following:
- Imagine you are tasked with reviewing or refreshing your school’s vision statement for the next five years.
- What are two key elements or qualities (e.g., student well-being, cultural responsiveness, innovation, community partnership) that you believe are absolutely essential to include in an inspiring vision for a New Zealand school in 2025 and beyond?
- Briefly explain your rationale for each, considering the current educational landscape and future aspirations for ākonga success in Aotearoa.
- Post your collaborative response on the forum (max. 150 words).
Assessment:
- Your personal reflections on your school’s vision and your team’s contribution.
- Forum Post: Your collaborative response with your learning partner outlining key elements for an inspiring school vision in 2025, with rationale.
Resources:
Future-focused Strategic Planning for Schools: The ‘What’ and the ‘Why’ need a ‘How’.
https://thinkstrategicforschools.com/strategic-planning-for-schools/
Governance Support Resources – Community Consultation
https://www.resourcecentre.org.nz/helpforboards?aId=ka0RF0000008fdtYAA
Local Curriculum Strategic Planning Guide
School Communication Planning Guide
https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/296999/School-Communication-Planning-Guide.pdf
7 Reasons Schools Need Strategic Plans
https://envisio.com/blog/7-reasons-schools-need-strategic-planning/
4 Responses
Our vision statement is: to Know, Love, and Serve God inspires me because it keeps student well-being and culture at the heart of our work. As a Christian school, our Strategic Plan focuses on ensuring the Bible is more central and authentically seen, used and understood. We want to make the Bible more actively present in daily life so that Scripture becomes a lived guide rather than just a reference. With our rich cultural diversity, including Te Ao Māori, we are weaving biblical principles and cultural perspectives into lessons, worship, and everyday interactions hopefully reflecting the fullness of God’s kingdom. This could be further enhanced by linking in purposeful Service Learning (which we are beginning to improve), led by staff in creating useful items to give away or sell at a reasonable price, allowing students to serve others in tangible, meaningful ways.Reflection of my schools strategic vision:What do you find most inspiring or impactful about it? – It offers a holistic view of learning. Students are encouraged to see the beauty and order in a mathematical equation, the wonder in a scientific discovery, or the purpose in an engineering solution, all as reflections of God’s design.It encourages a sense of purpose. Instead of just learning for the sake of a grade or a career, this vision gives students a higher purpose—to use their knowledge and skills to understand and share a story of creation, beauty, and redemption.It redefines what it means to be a “creator.” By linking STEAM to “telling God’s story,” the vision implies that we are co-creators with God. Whether it’s through designing a new piece of technology or creating a work of art, students are participating in the ongoing act of creation, which is a deeply meaningful and inspiring idea.What is one area you believe your team could contribute to more effectively to help achieve a specific strategic goal?
We are aiming to improve student achievement in writing across the school. Our target is 80% writing literacy (curriculum level)At present this is left to the English department to solve. Literacy impacts and is in everyones domain.
It’s a foundation for all learning. To achieve your 80% curriculum-level target, we need a shared, unified effort.A key area where my team could contribute more effectively is by creating and maintaining a cross-curricular literacy approach.This would focus on:Subject specific Literacy: Providing examples and strategies for how to teach the specific vocabulary, text structures, and communication styles relevant to each subject (e.g., how to read a scientific article, interpret a historical document, or understand a mathematical word problem).Scaffolding and Support: Offering high-quality, scaffolded resources that can be easily adapted by teachers in any subject area to support students with varying literacy needs.Collaborative Development: Serving as a platform where teachers from all curriculum areas can contribute, share, and review resources. This fosters a collaborative environment where literacy becomes everyone’s responsibility, not just a topic discussed in one department.By empowering every teacher with the tools to embed literacy instruction directly into their subject matter, we can make significant progress toward the strategic goal. This approach ensures that literacy is woven into the fabric of the entire curriculum, reinforcing its importance at every level.Via Google Meet and a shared Google Doc, Bruce and I discussed our school visions, strategic plans, how they worked, and how they could improve for the future of how we’d like to see our schools develop. We’ve decided our goals are quite similar:
Student Wellbeing: We establish a Christ-centred culture where every ākonga is known, equipped for servant leadership, and celebrated for growth and achievement. Rationale: strong hauora underpins learning, and authentic leadership opportunities embed character, manaakitanga, and confidence.
Innovation: We keep an adaptive edge through relevant STEAM service learning—students tackle real community needs using Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics with mātauranga Māori and sustainability in view. Rationale: rapidly shifting tools and careers in Aotearoa require curiosity, collaboration, and transferable problem-solving.
Purposeful Technology & Enterprise: We apply technology to bless others—e.g., designing and producing wheat bags and tote bags for genuine customers, from prototyping to marketing and financial stewardship. Rationale: purposeful making links Design Technology with Literacy and Mathematics, strengthens pathways, and shows how creativity and entrepreneurship can serve whānau and community.
Together these priorities honour our Christian vision and position graduates for hopeful, service-oriented futures in Aotearoa. For today and tomorrow.Therefore, at either school, the vision statement could be: Grounded in God, Growing in Service; or even: Know God, Share His Love.
Reflection of my schools strategic vision:
What do you find most inspiring or impactful about it? – It offers a holistic view of learning. Students are encouraged to see the beauty and order in a mathematical equation, the wonder in a scientific discovery, or the purpose in an engineering solution, all as reflections of God’s design.
It encourages a sense of purpose. Instead of just learning for the sake of a grade or a career, this vision gives students a higher purpose—to use their knowledge and skills to understand and share a story of creation, beauty, and redemption.
It redefines what it means to be a “creator.” By linking STEAM to “telling God’s story,” the vision implies that we are co-creators with God. Whether it’s through designing a new piece of technology or creating a work of art, students are participating in the ongoing act of creation, which is a deeply meaningful and inspiring idea.
What is one area you believe your team could contribute to more effectively to help achieve a specific strategic goal?
We are aiming to improve student achievement in writing across the school. Our target is 80% writing literacy (curriculum level)
At present this is left to the English department to solve. Literacy impacts and is in everyones domain.
It’s a foundation for all learning. To achieve your 80% curriculum-level target, we need a shared, unified effort.
A key area where my team could contribute more effectively is by creating and maintaining a cross-curricular literacy approach.
This would focus on:
Subject specific Literacy: Providing examples and strategies for how to teach the specific vocabulary, text structures, and communication styles relevant to each subject (e.g., how to read a scientific article, interpret a historical document, or understand a mathematical word problem).
Scaffolding and Support: Offering high-quality, scaffolded resources that can be easily adapted by teachers in any subject area to support students with varying literacy needs.
Collaborative Development: Serving as a platform where teachers from all curriculum areas can contribute, share, and review resources. This fosters a collaborative environment where literacy becomes everyone’s responsibility, not just a topic discussed in one department.
By empowering every teacher with the tools to embed literacy instruction directly into their subject matter, we can make significant progress toward the strategic goal. This approach ensures that literacy is woven into the fabric of the entire curriculum, reinforcing its importance at every level.
Via Google Meet and a shared Google Doc, Bruce and I discussed our school visions, strategic plans, how they worked, and how they could improve for the future of how we’d like to see our schools develop. We’ve decided our goals are quite similar:
Student Wellbeing: We establish a Christ-centred culture where every ākonga is known, equipped for servant leadership, and celebrated for growth and achievement. Rationale: strong hauora underpins learning, and authentic leadership opportunities embed character, manaakitanga, and confidence.
Innovation: We keep an adaptive edge through relevant STEAM service learning—students tackle real community needs using Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics with mātauranga Māori and sustainability in view. Rationale: rapidly shifting tools and careers in Aotearoa require curiosity, collaboration, and transferable problem-solving.
Purposeful Technology & Enterprise: We apply technology to bless others—e.g., designing and producing wheat bags and tote bags for genuine customers, from prototyping to marketing and financial stewardship. Rationale: purposeful making links Design Technology with Literacy and Mathematics, strengthens pathways, and shows how creativity and entrepreneurship can serve whānau and community.
Together these priorities honour our Christian vision and position graduates for hopeful, service-oriented futures in Aotearoa. For today and tomorrow.
Therefore, at either school, the vision statement could be: 1) Grounded in God, Growing in Service; or even: 2) Know God, Share His Love.In both schools, the focus is on students developing an understanding of who God is, and who they are in God, and the active renewing of their minds; this then should translate into a love for others, which in practical terms would mean sharing, or giving service – and this is where the growing occurs…this would never be complete, but part of our journey on Earth, as an act of faith and service.