Creating Tomorrow
Newsletter - October 2015
Dear Colleague
Welcome to our second newsletter which I hope you will find interesting and enjoy. In this edition we look at how to use SWOT analysis in an educational setting. Its a commonly used tool that enables an organisation to analyse itself and the environment surrounding it. We show how it can be used in planning for school improvement.
Before launching into a change programme its worth finding out how ready your organisation is for change and where you need to focus. We give you a link to our 5 minute readiness diagnostic.
Our facilitation of change course in January is filling up fast, book now to take advantage of the 10% discount.
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As always we welcome your feedback.
Kind regards
Pat Collarbone
Change, Grow, Succeed
Capacity2 course - Limited places available
London 18 - 20 January 2016
There has been lots of interest in our three days of intensive facilitation training that will transform how you lead change in your organisation. Whether you are a school leader, consultant or advisor this course will give you the tools to bring about both strategic and cultural change. Book now and save 10%
Normally £1000 - those booking before 30th October will receive an early bird rate of £900. We will also be offering overseas participants the opportunity to visit carefully selected schools in and around London on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 January. This will be costed according to individual requirements. Previous participants have really valued these visits.
Exciting opportunities in Africa
Our colleagues at Scholé are looking for experienced senior leaders to create outstanding schools in Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania delivering exceptional pupil outcomes for low fees. Are you a school improvement expert looking for a new challenge and who could develop the capacity of school leadership teams to deliver and sustain this? Contracts from six months to two years. To find out more visit their website or contact catherine@schole.org.uk
SWOT for school improvement
Purpose
This tool can be used to enrich the understanding of the school’s environment and the relative influence of different factors on the success of the teaching and curriculum provision. Your leadership team can then use those issues that have greatest impact (or potential impact) to drive its objectives. For example
- Strengths - How can the school ensure that it derives the most benefit from these?
- Weaknesses - How does the school address these areas?
- Opportunities - How can the school take advantage of these?
- Threats - How can the school counter these and develop strategies to plan for them?
SWOT is useful for generating contributions from a number of people simultaneously and ensuring that all have an equal opportunity to input. In doing so, it supports discussion and consensus building.
Process
Each participant writes one post-it for each feature that they think is a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity or Threat. Wherever possible, participants should be asked to add their evidence for this judgement eg. the school’s Strength is ‘curriculum design – received an outstanding in the recent Ofsted inspection’; a Weakness is ‘the breakfast club because none of the targeted pupils are attending’. This could also be done with four groups taking one category each.
The post-its are then stuck onto a large piece of paper in the relevant quadrant, grouping common factors where possible. Participants should read each other’s contributions to stimulate further ideas. Look for Strengths that link with an Opportunity or Weaknesses with Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses will generally apply to the school itself; Opportunities and Threats to the external environment.
Participants then place post-its according to their impact on standards and achievement – towards the centre of the matrix if they are thought to have a low impact, and towards the outside of the matrix if they will have a high impact.
Hints and Tips
Post-its are used to make it easy to move the ideas during the prioritisation phase.
It is useful to explore at this stage where there are Threats, how they can be turned into Opportunities. Robust facilitation helps to ensure that the group takes the ideas generated forward into concrete actions – these could be short, medium or long term.
Potential participants
Whole school staff, governors, parents, pupils, partner organisations.
Typical duration
40 minutes
Resources
A large sheet of paper 2x1m - marked up as shown
Blutac - to fix the paper to the wall
Post-it notes
Texters/marker pens
How ready is your team for change? Find out with Ready2
Score your perception of how ready your organisation is for change and in less than five minutes you will have a clear picture of where you and your organisation need to focus effort when looking for sustainable strategic change.
Get your colleagues to do the same and then share the results at your next meeting. We guarantee it will be one of the most productive sessions you will ever hold.
Click here to try Ready2