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/
6 Responses
Our school’s vision, “To guarantee to challenge every learner to explore the world together,” grounds us. It’s clear, it’s active, and it reflects who we are. Learning at Te Uho o te Nīkau isn’t something that happens in isolation. It’s something we do alongside our learners, our whānau, and each other. The word together is key. It captures the culture we’ve built (6 years young): connected, courageous, and curious.
Our school’s mission, “Nourish, Grow, Thrive,” reminds us to put people first. When we invest in our kaiako, support our tamariki, and build strong relationships with whānau, teaching and learning have the greatest opportunity. For me, that’s what leadership is about. Creating the conditions where people can do their best work and feel proud of it.
Our school’s strategic plan is now in its final year, and it’s given us time to really reflect on what’s working and what needs to evolve. We keep our strategic goals visible, and they frame our meetings, our planning, and our professional learning. Reviewing the annual plan together, with voices from staff, board, and whānau, keeps us aligned and accountable. It’s about shared responsibility, not top-down leadership.
The area where I see the most opportunity to grow is within our “Nourish” strategic goal — building professional capability and collective capacity that empowers learners and enhances outcomes. From 2026, we’ll be rolling out a restructured leadership model that gives our middle leaders greater opportunity to grow and lead. It’s a big step for us. With that comes the need to strengthen relational trust and shared leadership. We’ll need to be intentional about communication, clarity, and how we support one another through change.
Working in a flexible learning environment means collaboration isn’t optional. It’s the way we succeed. When kaiako plan, reflect, and problem-solve together, the consistency and quality of learning lifts. It’s the “glue” that holds our practice together.
Through the Growth Culture module, I’ve come to see that genuine growth happens when challenge and trust sit side by side. This has shaped how I approach leadership conversations. Focusing more on reflection, feedback, and learning together. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about creating a culture where people feel safe to keep getting better.
What I value most about our strategic plan is that it actually lives in our daily practice. It’s not just words on paper; it guides how we teach, lead, and make decisions.
Our school’s vision is built on ‘Kotahitanga’. What is inspiring about our refreshed vision is that ‘Kotahitanga’ was what got us through all the challenges and changes we had to adapt to post-cyclone. We were in that state of surviving, not thriving, as student and staff well-being was our main focus and priority. Achieving this required a unified, reflective process involving everyone: students, staff, the Board of Trustees, and our wider whānau and community. Kotahitanga reinforces our core values: Hauora (Health, well-being, and personal growth), Aroha (Caring for ourselves, others, our Kura, and Community), Kotahitanga (Striving Together, teamwork, leadership), and Akonga (Growing learning goals, or our learning behaviors). By striving together, we demonstrate Aroha, fostering holistic Hauora, which leads to achievement and success in Akonga.
An area I believe our team could contribute more to is our strategic goal on schoolwide behaviour and promoting wellbeing for all. They have the systems and capabilities (IYT and PB4L training), but they are not proactively putting this into practice.
Two key elements I believe are essential to include in an inspiring vision would be ‘Student-wellbeing’ and ‘Community Partnership’. Student-Wellbeing is paramount—it’s about creating a safe, culturally responsive environment where every ākonga is valued, can thrive, and feel a true sense of belonging (mana whenua). Through Community Partnership – working closely with our whānau, iwi, and local groups allows us to enrich our curriculum, affirm student identity, and establish a powerful, shared network that supports their success. Our tamariki are OUR WHY, and Community Partnerships are OUR HOW. This collective focus prepares confident, connected, lifelong learners.
Feedback from my Learning partner, Lisa..
I think well-being is absolutely essential to include. I am really resonating with “Student Wellbeing” as you suggest. Obviously, contributing to student well-being is their, and in turn, others’ behaviour around them. You note IYT and PB4L as the tool to achieve this and is such a good foundation for your kura. I wonder why they are not proactively putting this in place as you say? Maybe a revisit of this learning or even, a focus on “Staff Wellbeing” alongside your “Student Wellbeing”. That could give you an insight into where they are at also. We know that their well-being will definitely filter down to the students, too.
I find our THS’s vision deeply motivating, especially its focus on connection, identity, and restorative practice. One area my team could grow even further is deepening the student voice in shaping and leading wellbeing initiatives, empowering ākonga as co-designers of school culture.
In imagining a refreshed school vision for 2025, two essential elements stand out:
1. Cultural responsiveness; Every learner should see themselves, their whakapapa, and their language reflected and respected in the life of the school. It supports identity, belonging, and equity.
2. Student wellbeing and leadership; Wellbeing is a foundation for learning. Embedding student voice and leadership into everyday systems helps grow confident, resilient, future-ready rangatahi.
These elements reflect the evolving needs of our ākonga and our responsibility to prepare them for a changing world with aroha, clarity, and purpose.
Module 9 – Reflecting on and Contributing to Strategic Vision:
In the current educational landscape, schools face constant change. New governments bring policy shifts, the world is transforming digitally, and social and environmental challenges evolve rapidly. Strategic planning needs to ensure we continue to focus on what is most important through any upheaval. With that said, the 2 key elements that I believe are the most important are, innovation (quality teaching and learning) and Student Well Being.
As education changes and moves we have seen the impact of situations outside of our control eg: covid and cylcone. These things have had significant impacts on our students. Statistics for mental health for our young people are scary and we need to be mindful of the fast changing world with impacts of social media and the like and how this impacts our young people. Keeping Student Well being at the forefront is vital.
To ensure innovative learning for students we want to embrace and encourage creative and critical thinking for our teachers. Expecting them to deliver quality learning programmes. With so much dynamic change in the world we require our students to become critical thinkers who ask questions, take risks, problem solve, collaborate and be resilient in an every changing world. Creating learners with these skills requires shifts in the way we teach continually questioning the impact of our pedagogies.
MODULE 9 – Reflecting on and Contributing to Strategic Vision:
We are currently in the process of reviewing the vision. It is interesting to note how rapidly the content of a school vision can become irrelevant within a short period of time. This is based on multiple factors, for example; changes within the educational sector, societal changes, and even transitions of leadership within a school. Our current vision was only created 3 years ago, with collaborative input from the current staff, whānau and BoT but recently taking time to critique the current vision we realise it needs an overhaul.
An effective process to challenge thoughts and begin the process of redesign is to look at and ask insightful and challenging questions. The questions we asked as a leadership team and with staff came directly from the Springboard Trust, a well known impact organisation working within the education sector. These were, is our vision directional, clear, meaningful, challenging, simple, focused, inspiring and measurable From this activity we could all agree that our new vision needs to fully embrace our school for where it is at right now. Short and simple helps give clarity to everyone.
The vision is important because it shapes the culture of the school, building cohesion and a shared language. It sets out what is expected in your kura and it helps drive what you do on a day to day basis, term basis and annual basis. The vision drives all strategic planning and influences decisions you make about what is and isn’t part of your learning space.
The school vision is usually one of the first things that community will see on your school website. It must therefore encapsulate, in a precise and inspiring way, what your school is about.
Feedback from my learning partner – Hi Lisa, it’s great to hear that your school is proactively reviewing its vision! You are right, the educational landscape is constantly evolving, with changes in the sector, new initiatives, and even shifts in leadership all impacting a school’s direction. The recognition that a vision can rapidly become “irrelevant” isn’t a sign of a flawed initial process, but rather an understanding of the dynamic nature of education. This shows a commitment to ensuring the vision truly reflects the school’s current reality and future aspirations.
Springboard Trust’s framework is an excellent model to use for critiquing your current school vision as it allows insight that a short and simple vision can provide greater clarity for everyone. A strong vision truly does shape the culture of the school, fostering cohesion and a shared language. This proactive and thoughtful approach to vision review demonstrates strong leadership and a commitment to ensuring the school’s foundation is always aligned with its evolving needs and the best interests of its students, staff, and wider community. I look forward to seeing the new vision unfold!