Strategic planning is an essential element in ensuring school excellence through the systematic, focused, and continuous implementation of programs. This paper aims to analyse the role of strategic planning in enhancing school excellence based on two key articles: Sustaining School Improvement Initiatives: Advice from Educational Leaders by Koh et al. (2023) and Strategic Action Plans for School Improvement: An Exploratory Study About Quality Indicators for School Improvement Plan Evaluation by Carvalho et al. (2022). This paper employs document analysis of both articles, supported by recent literature on strategic planning in education. The study by Koh et al. (2023) involved 12 educational leaders from four educational organisations in Australia through semi-structured interviews, whereas Carvalho et al. (2022) analysed 663 school Strategic Action Plans (SAPs) in Portugal using content analysis. The findings indicate that Koh et al. (2023) identified seven key themes: clear program selection, strategic leadership, continuous professional development, data and feedback sharing, time and resource management, distributed leadership, and a school culture that supports change. Meanwhile, Carvalho et al. (2022) identified nine quality indicators for strategic action plans and found that most action plans resembled lists of activities rather than strategic plans that systematically guided school improvement efforts. Overall, this paper demonstrates that successful strategic planning depends on distributed leadership, data utilization, a collaborative culture, continuous monitoring, and program sustainability in enhancing school excellence.
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