The Importance of Planning in Education Management

What is Planning

Available literature (Hoy and Miskel, 1982; Patton and Sawicki, 1986; Lunenburg and Ornstein, 1991; Bateman and Zeithaml, 1993; William Garner, 2003; Victoria L. Bernhardt, 2006) states that planning is a conscious, systematic process during which decisions are made about the goals and activities that an individual, group, work unit, or organization will pursue in the future. It is the consensus of experts that planning is not an informal or haphazard group of decisions made in response to a crisis. Rather, it is a purposeful effort, directed and controlled by education managers but often drawing on the knowledge and experience of employees throughout the organization.

Planning is a decision-making process that requires expertise from different disciplines and necessitates cross-collaboration among different stakeholders. For example, the comprehensive education plan that an education sector adopts and implements for a country is not just the work of education policy makers, but that of a pool of education stakeholders that includes students, teachers, education officials, parents, and even the business and government sectors.

The planning process is also an organizational strategy used to respond to problems that beset the organizations. Planning is often equated to a problem-solving process that normally starts with problem definition and description, followed by various forms of analysis, which might include simulation and modeling, prediction and prescription of design, often involving the evaluation of alternative solutions to the problem.

Importance of Planning

One cannot overemphasize the importance of planning in an organization or in a sector like education. Planning is the process that clarifies for the organization or the sector the long-term direction. It defines the current state of the organization or sector and where it is going next. It also provides the focus for resources, energy and activity. It ensures continuous focus on educational priorities and clearly defines the sequence of events that must occur to implement the vision.

In education, for example, teaching is a highly complex, purposeful activity, and is intended to help pupils move forward so that they can add to their knowledge, understanding and skills. Spontaneity and creativity are useful attributes, but effective teachers must succeed in managing the classroom environment in order to maximize the opportunities for all pupils to learn. Although there always remains some place for the spontaneous, the intuitive and the serendipitous, planning is fundamental to creating an effective learning environment and ensuring that pupils make progress.

Education planning is also important in order to address the diverse learning needs of pupils. It is important to note that to maximize learning, it is imperative to consider individual differences in learning style, interest, motivation and aptitude. Teachers, therefore, should impart knowledge, understanding and skills in ways that suit learners’ abilities.

Differentiation is clearly linked with the principle of equality of opportunity. The opportunity to learn effectively is a right for all learners, and it is enshrined in most schools' mission statement and curricular aims and objectives. Differentiation is necessary to secure an effective curriculum. It puts the emphasis firmly on what is learned, rather than what is taught.

A taught curriculum may be broad, balanced and relevant, but this has little meaning unless these are also features of what is learned. Effective learning depends on the confidence and motivation of the learner. Confidence brings motivation and motivation brings achievement. The focus upon maximized learning, therefore, means we need to take into account whatever differences learners may present in the classroom. Thus, education planning requires teachers to think about what can be done to:

•  identify need;
• set learning objectives or learning outcomes;
• organize learning experiences;
• develop appropriate resources;
• assign tasks; and
•  assess achievement.