Description of a School Improvement Planning Process

The improvement plan for a school is a directional tool used in the establishment of expected change required to enhance the improvement of students. It also used to indicate the processes in which the prevailing development changes are reached at the right time. Therefore the improvement planning is progressive steps for goal setting for a school aimed at achieving its improvement objectives (Ontario, Education Improvement Commission, 12 Feb 2000, pg 10). The process also involves the serious decision making on the way and the best time for the school improvement strategy to be established by the stakeholders of the school. The main aim of this improvement process for a school is to enhance the student’s performance by developing a good curriculum delivery process, improvement of learning atmosphere and strengthening the level of involvement of parents in the learning of their children. This should be done at all levels of learning including when students are at school and at home where the learning attention is required by the students. However, the school must just make a unique long lasting change for them to attain their improvement goal for learning in a school. The importance of the improvement plan is to make the school accountable to the public about the success of the students and to portray a measuring instrument for the improvement progress for the school.

One of the very essential steps in the improvement planning is the establishment of a plan which is developed when all the school stakeholders like teachers, parents and other community members are present to participate in its development. They are to collect the necessary data and analyze these data to ascertain the particular demand of the school. The data collected are then compared with the new incoming data to assess the improvement of the strategy. This is done by the members of the public and the school itself to measure the improvement growth of the school. The increase in the improvement in the school is to be celebrated by all the stakeholders to enhance its growth (Lawrence and Barbara, 12 Feb 1990, pg 10). All the stakeholders are to assess the information of the students and make priorities for the change in a numbers of activities which affect the improvement. In this stage the principal of the school is very important because he has a responsibility to facilitate the organization of the improvement planning team for the school .This team should be responsible for the development of priorities and avail the necessary information required for the process of planning.

It is necessary for the head of a school to pass the improvement information to all the stakeholders in a manner that can influence them to actively take part in the implementation process. All the willing stakeholders are to be accepted in the team but teachers must come from the entire departments of the school to support other members like parents in the understanding of the information regarding the student’s performance (Leithwood and Robert, 13 Dec 1995, pg 23). They are also to help other team members to accept important norms and drawbacks which might be encountered during the implementation process. The principal of the school must ensure that team members are a reflective of the entire community in which the school belongs to facilitate a good demographic profile in the process. The important insight and directions is to be guaranteed by other stakeholders to make the improvement process effective. Part of the school students is also to be encouraged to be part of the team more so the leaders for them not to feel left out in the planning process of the school.

The meeting schedules should be parallel to allow all the stakeholders to be part of the meeting. The decisions are to be made after a serious consultation from each meeting. This is done by holding a sequence of discussion with each of the group to have harmonious result of the planning process (Leithwood and Robert, 13 Dec 1995, pg 23). The data and prospective information about the students performance is the scrutinized by the team including the conduciveness of the learning environment of the school. The decision is then made on the analyzed data of school by the improvement team. During the decision making process, the stickers are issued to the team members where they are to get one third of the amount of weaknesses. The voting takes place in case of the curriculum weaknesses which needs the team’s attention in the initial stage. All the dots available in the stickers must be used but only one is to indicate the weakness and therefore more dots in the weakness represent the first priority for the improvement point.