be nice

1. DEVELOPING STRATEGIC PLANNING
IN A SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICE
PRESENTER
MS. LIRA LEI ANN I. BONDOC

2. ABOUT:
Authors:
Jin Saker (Loughborough University Business
School, Loughborough, UK)
Richard Speed (University of Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia)
Published:
International Journal of Educational
Management (1996)

3. DEFINITION OF
TERMS
• STRATEGIC PLANNING - Strategic
planning is the art of creating specific
business strategies, implementing them,
and evaluating the results of executing
the plan, in regard to a company’s
overall long-term goals or desires. It is a
concept that focuses on integrating
various departments (such
as accounting and finance, marketing,
and human resources) within a company
to accomplish its strategic goals. The
term strategic planning is essentially
synonymous with strategic management.

4. DEFINITION OF
TERMS
• CONVENTIONAL STRATEGIC PLANNING
– it is a traditional planning.
Conventional strategic plans does not
account for change or learning new
things. In this type of planning change
becomes the enemy. This could cause
problems for a business or eventually
failure of a business.

5. DEFINITION OF
TERMS
MARKETING PLANNING - A marketing
plan is a document that outlines the
marketing strategies, tactics and
activities that a business intends to
employ to support either a brand or
product. It reflects the implementation
and control of the marketing elements
of a business, providing direction for
individuals and teams so that they’re
aligned. In this respect, it is both a
strategic and operational document.

6. DEFINITION OF
TERMS
• MAINSTREAM INTEGRATION – Mainstreaming
supports that students with special needs may
benefit in general education classroom. The
learning process is the same as his/her peers but it
may differ in the way he/she is being assessed as
long as progress is evident in the regular
classroom.
• MAINSTREAMING- in the context of education, is
the practice of placing students with
special education services in a
general education classroom during specific time
periods based on their skills. To clarify, this means
students who are a part of the
special education classroom will join the
regular education classroom at certain times which
are fitting for the special education student.

7. OBJECTIVES
• This article reports a case situation where strategic
planning was attempted by an educational service for
hearing-impaired people, for the conventional method of
strategic marketing planning proved inappropriate to
both their situation and needs.
• The article outlines the internal and external situations of
the hearing impaired people, and discusses the problems
found in applying conventional planning techniques.
• The alternative approaches to planning considered in light
of these problems, are then discussed and in the final
section, the article outlines the method employed.

8. INTRODUCTION
The efficacy of strategic management thought
and techniques for sectors other than the
conventional profit-making commercial sector
has been a major theme in academic literature
since the work of Kotler and Levy, who saw a
need when organizations outside the profit-
making commercial sector “are concerned about
their ‘product’ in the eyes of certain ‘customers’
and are seeking to find ‘tools’ for furthering their
acceptance”.
Their conclusion, that non-profit organizations
ranging from charities to politicians had these
concerns, implied that it was a lack of strategic
management and marketing skills rather than
applicability of techniques that constituted the
barrier to successful implementation in these
areas.

9. INTRODUCTION
STRATEGIC PLANNING VS CONVENTIONAL PLANNING
• Strategic planning is necessary process that must occur
for any organization to thrive and prosper. It provides a
roadmap for the organization to follow in achieving it
goals. While conventional strategic plans does not count
change or learning new things. In this type of planning
change becomes the enemy.
• Strategic intent allows for individuals to use their
creativity and expertise to determine what is good for
the organization. This allows for some flexibility in the
plan to adjust for the here-and-now based on current
market conditions. Skills based strategic planning makes
resources available for employees to gain the necessary
training and additional tools to reach maximum
potential in their job productivity.

10. RELATED LITERATURE

11. CASE: MARKETING
PLANNING FOR SPECIAL
EDUCATION
• One of the provisions of the Education Reform Act
(1988) requires schools to produce “School
Development Plan” - strategic plan, with separate
and subordinate plans for resources, curriculum and
external communication. Our involvement with the
case arose from acting as advisers on this planning
process.
• The case study concerns the educational service for
hearing-impaired pupils in a major city.
• Mainstream Integration - Like all special education
provision, the service does not operate on the basis
of “open enrolment”; that is, a system with a parental
right to choose, subject to availability of places, but
on the basis of diagnosis of needs. Children are
frequently diagnosed as needing support from the
service well before the normal age for starting
school.
Internal
Situation

12. INTERNAL
SITUATION
The service segments its pupils into three groups on the
basis of severity of disability and the needs of the pupil.
Service provision has been divided into four different
sections:
• signing units for the most profoundly deaf children;
• mainstream units located in selected mainstream
schools throughout the city, where children are
supported by one or more teachers of the deaf, who
can offer a mix of separate lessons or support in
mainstream classes;
• a support service which visits children with lesser
hearing problems in mainstream schools;
• and a pre-school service which works with children and
their families from diagnosis to school age.

13. INTERNAL
SITUATION
The organization of the service for
hearing impaired in the city has a considerable
impact on its culture and management. Since
the service operates either in units located in
mainstream schools or peripatetically, the sense
of a single identity and membership of the
service is reduced by the geographical dispersal
of staff and by the fact that many staff work
alone.

14. INTERNAL
SITUATION
A further cause of reduced identity with
the service is the fact that the units’ staff are
jointly members of the service and the host
school. They are therefore occasionally faced
with conflicting demands. Similarly, pupils are
pupils of both the host school and of the
service, so ultimate responsibility for pupils
rests with neither the host head nor the head of
the service individually.

15. INTERNAL
SITUATION
The service has a wide range of stakeholders.
In addition to the staff, there is the local
education authority (LEA) and the advisory
body, which are equivalent to governors, as
well as parents and pupils.
All service staff have additional qualifications
as teachers of the deaf, but none have
undertaken any formalized management or
marketing training. The culture of any
organization will inevitably reflect the primary
values held by members.

16. EXTERNAL
SITUATION
The environment external to the service has been
heavily influenced by legislative changes. First, the
Government has introduced reform of the management of
education. The Education Reform Act (1988):
• It introduced local management of schools (LMS),
devolving responsibility for many issues from the LEA to
the governors and management of mainstream schools.
• Governing bodies are allowed to spend the designated
funding “as they think fit for the purposes of the school”.
• special schools or educational services are not included
in the original LMS scheme.
• Allowing mainstream schools to become “grant
maintained” and to “opt out” of LEA control.

17. Hearing Impaired pupils Host School
Large proportion of the
financial provision for
unit been devolved to
the host school
LEA (Local Education
Authority)
No control over how the
money is spent
They don’t know if it
spent on the unit or not.
Ultimate Authority (Head
teachers)
Pupils and service
Conflicting Management
of LEA and host school
Financial Problem

18. Teachers should have a
secondary qualification in
teaching the deaf
Sabbatical Training
The change has removed one source of trained
teachers of the deaf and reduced the pool of
staffs available
Minor Change on
Training of Teachers

19. Ansoff suggested two frameworks to analyze the degree of turbulence that an
organization may find in its working environment.
Table 1 presents a range of factors operating in the environment over which an
educational establishment will have a little or no control.

20. Table II illustrates the same principle but looks at factors over which there is some
management control. Taking the environment in which the service operates, it can be
seen that in both tables the area that best describes the situation is to the right of the
framework. This would suggest that the service requires a creative and flexible
management style and that any planning process should take this into account.

21. PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT
Synoptic Planning Incremental Planning
Formalized
Comprehensive
Linear
Informal
Limited
Holistic

22. Synoptic Planning Incremental Planning
In turbulent environment, it is impossible
because the level of integration required
comprehensive planning cannot be achieved.
It has better performance in unstable
environment.

23. • The environment faced by the service for hearing impaired pupils is one of
great uncertainty, changing regulation and managerial responsibility, and
any marketing planning method placing such importance on
comprehensive situational analysis is bound to cause problems.
• A situational analysis of the sort required in synoptic planning is therefore
of limited effectiveness – since the environment may change – and of
limited efficiency – since considerable resources must be devoted to
obtaining data in such an environment.
• All organizations planning for the first time are faced with situation of
limited knowledge and many adopt an incremental approach to introduce
a cultural change towards planning and hence enable synoptic planning
to be achieved in future. However, in the case of the service for hearing
impaired pupils’ such an adjustment

24. • The culture of the service undoubtedly formed the principal internal
barrier to successful marketing planning, since it led to a poor
understanding of and commitment to planning techniques. By contrast,
however, the same culture was without doubt one of the service’s overall
strengths.
• The limited interest in managerial issues was accompanied by an
extremely strong commitment to the education and welfare of the
hearing-impaired children and through this generated an extremely high-
quality service. The cultural change necessary to generate successful
synoptic planning in the organization therefore posed a grave threat from
an educational, rather than a managerial viewpoint, to the service’s quality
and commitment.
• It can be seen that the synoptic planning approach has several major
weaknesses in this context. Particularly important is the need to avoid
having an adverse impact on a non-managerial but strongly pedagogic

25. ALTERNATIVE PLANNING PROCESSES
• The response to this problem adopted for the service for hearing
impaired was to adapt the incremental strategic planning model for
marketing planning purposes.
• Table IV illustrates the divergence of approach with conventional
synoptic marketing planning. Initially the approaches are similar: in
both cases, a mission is defined. In the case of the service, this is “to
enable every hearing impaired young person being educated in the
city to achieve their full potential in all areas”.
• The next stage is also similar; but, for the reasons outlined in the
previous section, rather than complete the situational analysis
required in synoptic planning, a qualitative SWOT was carried out by
an elected working group of service staff, using opinions supplied
by surveying all staff as the basis for their discussions.

27. ADVANTAGES ON ADOPTED
PLANNING FRAMEWORK
• because of its incremental approach, it did not commit the service to
elaborate plans or to the creation of such plans when the environmental
turbulence might easily undo the work
• because the incremental approach does not seek to create the perfect
strategy first time round, a lower level of analysis is required allowing the
process to proceed more rapidly with the maximum staff involvement
• the incremental approach, with the emphasis on the emergence of
strategy and decisions arising from group interaction, allowed the
process to be very democratic in nature, and hence increased the
“ownership” of the resulting decisions
• Overall, the planning process served to identify issues where marketing
techniques might be applied, increase the understanding of issues
throughout the service, create teams using marketing tools to address
service objectives and motivate service staff to address problems and
issues

28. CONCLUSIONS
• First, it appears that the synoptic planning emphasized in most
marketing planning literature, and also by a number of
government publications, is not necessarily the optimum method
in all situations.
• Second, in an organization such as this, with an organizational
culture which, although non-managerial, is nevertheless a key
factor in the organization’s success, the challenge is to develop a
planning process which develops a workable plan without
requiring an excessive change in organizational culture. Synoptic
planning, or incremental planning as a step towards developing a
synoptic approach, clearly does not meet this challenge.

29. • Third, there are certain lessons which this experience
suggests which could help other organizations in the
education sector.
o The main lesson is to resist the attempt to impose a
formalized planning process on the organization. A more
incremental approach, starting with agreed objectives, is
more likely to accede “ownership” to the staff who
subsequently will be involved in implementing the plan.
o Another is to acknowledge where the organization is
starting from and not to prescribe solutions.
o A third lesson is to allow maximum feasible staff
involvement with people at all levels of the organization
who also are involved in strategy development.

30. The Government has required educators to adopt
techniques and methods of the marketplace while
simultaneously launching a series of reforms which have
created an environment of such turbulence that the
techniques it recommends are of little use.
A role exists for management academics and
professionals to develop techniques that allow educators
to complete these tasks effectively and so efficiently
minimize the time their specialist skills are denied to the
children for whom the service exists.

31. Thank you for listening!