ABSTRACT

This chapter is about the use and effects of strategic planning in schools. Strategic planning is a term that was unheard of in education only a decade ago. Most teachers would have been forgiven for believing that strategic planning was something that was important during wars or that was undertaken by big multinational business corporations. This ‘naivety’ among teachers has been transformed in the 1990s because strategic planning has become one of the processes commanding attention from all engaged in school activity. Strategic planning as a phenomenon is the result of developments in the worlds of business, industry and commerce where it has been common practice for over a decade. Governments of the 1980s, moved by the successes of the private sector, implemented reforms in the public sector which mirrored practices in private enterprise.