The features of an effective school strategic plan: Literature review

Key findings

• Plan quality is positively associated with student performance and achievement.
• There are 2 important aspects to effective plans: form (structure) and content (goals, approaches and practices). Schools need to pay attention to both when constructing a plan.
• Overall, the features of an effective strategic plan are:
  • Compelling mission and vision statements
  • Specific, sharp and select goals, approaches and practices
  • Content on goals, approaches and practices aligns with the evidence on ‘what works’ for school improvement  
  • Defined processes for monitoring and evaluation that are data-informed, and contain clear performance measures and time frames
  • Coherence within and across documents (for example, across multi-year and annual plans). 

Practice guides

The findings inform AERO’s practice guides to support school leaders to develop and apply effective school strategic plans.

• Setting goals and targets for student learning
• Prioritising approaches to achieve each goal
• Selecting practices to deliver improvement
• Evaluating for continuous school improvement

Keywords: practice implementation, educational strategies, school improvement