By Awuor Wycliffe Akello
The concept of strategic planning has become common in contemporary management environments yet its practicability within some institutions still remains worrying.
Strategic planning can be defined as: A management tool to help an organization to improve its performance by ensuring that its members are working towards the same goals, a disposition and a procedure concerned with future results of current choices and among other definitions or a set of rules and defined techniques that control activities being embraced to accomplish the set objectives and targets.
For schools to effectively operate, they must come up with Strategic Plans that will guide their operations. This way, they will be able to surmount challenges even at the height of unprecedented circumstances.
Strategic management prism will guarantee pathway which also enables regime transitions seamless. It will also take into account the psycho-social challenges faced by learners to prescribe best practices that will ensure sustainable learner progress. Proper understanding of school environment through SWOT analysis is essential in charting a new course for the school.
With enhanced accountability and prudent use of resources, schools are able to manage the murky operational environments. Strategic Planning approach, as a participatory undertaking, will synchronize synergies from all stakeholders and equip each category with requisite competencies to run their dockets for the overall good of the school.
Private and public schools are both faced with a number of challenges as much as they are expected to continue delivering their services.
The enrolment of learners has shot up at a rate that does not correspond to the infrastructure in schools yet government subsidies also trickle in erratic manner that sends many to bewilderment.
The schools are to constantly pay workers yet in many cases the allocations for Non-Teaching Staff are below budgets. This puts a heavy strain on school managers who have to scratch their heads to create a working balance.
Furthermore, the nationwide teacher shortage remains an impediment to effective curriculum implementation.
It is thus incumbent upon school Principals and head teachers to device a mechanism to hire teachers. The problems is that Teachers Service Commission insists on trained teachers with TSC numbers, who have considerable experience to be absorbed on Board of Management terms.
This move increases the bargain of such teachers in terms of proper remuneration, posing a problem to schools with weak financial muscles.
The abolition of corporal punishment in schools implies that learner discipline in schools has significantly dropped and embracing dialogue and counseling to remedy indiscipline requires a collective approach which shall be mainstreamed in Strategic plan document.
Low payment of school fees and other levies by parents puts schools to quagmire. The government keeps on insisting that students should stay in school even if they haven’t paid school fees.
These are just tips of iceberg of the bottlenecks that confront schools today.
The writer is a development expert. He can be reached through: 0724559085/akewuori@gmail.com
