Planning career education

Setting goals for career education

How to approach strategic planning

: Goals should clearly set out what you want to achieve, and by when

Strategic planning determines future directions and strategies to achieve identified outcomes. How you approach this planning depends on whether or not you have previously set strategic goals.

1. When strategic goals have not previously been set, you should:

identify best practice
evaluate your current situation
analyse data and identify key issues
prioritise issues
write strategic goals
develop operational goals and plans for agreed strategic goals
implement and evaluate your goals.

Examples of things you may want to consider when setting new strategic goals are:

What career activities are working well?
What steps do you need to take to implement a whole-school approach?
What is your school currently doing in relation to your community networks?

2. When strategic planning has previously been done, you should:

evaluate your current situation and previous planning/goal-setting activities
identify further goals
develop operational goals and plans
implement and evaluate goals and plans.

When re-setting goals, you should consider:

Have student needs changed? For example, are there new target groups?
What is working well? What is not going so well?
What do you want to achieve in the next 12 months, or within other set time frames?

"Ideally there will be a strong link between a specific goal in the school strategic plan and implementation expectations in the annual plan. The link should then be carried through to expectations for all staff through departmental goals for staff development and student outcomes and the performance management system.

"The circle would be completed with reporting back to the board of trustees on the delivery and effectiveness of this element of the strategic plan."

Education Review Office, The CPaBL Initiative – Overview Evaluation, February 2009.

Strategic and operational goals: what's the difference?

Strategic goals

Strategic goals are long-term goals that describe broad outcomes. For example, improve student's access to information.

Operational goals

Operational goals are SMARTER (specific, measurable,achievable, realistic, time-bound, energising and rewarding) goals, and are usually short-term. They describe the actions needed to reach a strategic goal. For example, present a business case to the principal for a career centre to be in place by the end of the year.

Setting goals and planning action

Start with small achievable steps, have measurable goals, ensure planned growth and build a team around you to support you in the change. When setting your strategic and operational goals, consider:

What student outcomes do you want to achieve?
What goals do you have for specific groups?
What strategies will help you to achieve these student outcomes/goals? How will you know they are working? What specific actions do you need to implement these strategies?

Resources for identifying best practice

The following resources may also help you identify and work towards best practice.

Career Services, Career Education in Practice [handbook], 2009.
Education Review Office, The Quality of Career Education and Guidance in Schools, 2006.
Ministry of Education, Career Education and Guidance in New Zealand Schools, 2003.
Willett, Jan, Careers Education Quality Framework, Australia, 1999.