The Role of Strategic Planning in Ensuring the Success of Education

Abstract

The research paper elaborates on the main concepts and terminology of strategic planning in education, including all the steps of building a strategic plan with mission and vision statements. Furthermore, it analyses and compares some successful strategic planning case studies in education by identifying the strengths and some weaknesses. The final results of this inquiry serve as recommendations for positive changes and reforms in North Macedonian education. Furthermore, this research paper emphasizes the importance of the SMART strategic goals for improving education, articulated via the mission and vision statements. It is quite interesting that internationally accredited educational organizations like NOVA IS of Skopje have more successful improvement plans based on shared values and goals via their mission and vision. The implementation of their strategic plans is closely monitored and evaluated. Moreover, some successful educational reforms happened in Finland, Singapore, and Victoria, Australia, and their ministries of education are dedicated and accountable to aligning their mission and vision with all public schools in these countries. On the contrary, although the Ministry of Education of North Macedonia has clearly published the mission and vision statements, there is still a huge gap in the reality of implementation of those in all public schools, and rarely any school has a shared mission and vision on their web page. Browsing around, one primary school in North Macedonia, “Jan Amos Komenski” has recently started sharing their school’s mission and vision, values, and goals with the community which is a positive change toward SMART reforms. Strategic planning affects the improvement of learning and teaching; therefore it needs to be built inclusively and wisely.