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scussing beforehand all the issues with the principal was considered to be beneficial. She gave me permission to approach the staff personally to ask them to complete the survey. As Punch states, researching one’s own environment may lead to a difficulty in maintaining:“...a dispassionate, objective, arm’s length approach to the research situation. Selective sampling, bias in the collection or analysis of the data and bias in the interpretation of results are obvious possibilities.” (2009, p44)

Being a subject teacher in School X was quite easy to distribute the questionnaires and to collect them by hand. However, it was not that easy to ask colleagues to reflect and to answer questions about their own involvement in the school development plan process because they know quite well that being one of them makes me know the reality. The participants understood quite well the benefits of this research.

Analysis Introduction

All twenty questionnaires that were distributed in School X in October 2010 were answered and returned back. The school has currently started implementing a new School Development Plan (SDP) for the present and the coming scholastic year. Underneath I’m presenting the findings and the analysis related to the research questions established in the introduction of this assignment.

To what extent does the development planning process helps school improvement?

Findings

Knowing that the SDP’s main aim is to create action plans for school improvement (questions 21 and 26) nearly all the respondents in School X indicated that this is present in their SDP. In fact only one LSA didn’t agree with this statement that was investigated in question 8. Despite this fact, not everyone seemed to support the view that the SDP review students progress and that its targets are focused on students learning (questions 11 and 12 see figure 1 below). However, they agreed that the plan is somehow always linked with the previous one (question 13).

All participants agreed that an SDP should address school policies, behaviour and discipline, and students’ needs. All of them except one highlighted also the decision making process, pastoral care, teamwork amongst staff members, and school’s strengths and weaknesses. Three participants seem to be neutral to the idea of the mission statement in the plan, and all the others agreed. Three teachers agreed that the monetary aspect should be included in the SDP. Staff development, relationships with parents and students were also indicated to be important in the planning process (question 28 see Appendix 2 figure 5).

Analysis

Hopkins and Lagerweij (1996, p77) presents two types of planning which sometimes may be mixed up together. These consist of ‘development planning’ and ‘maintenance planning’. The latter is mainly concerned with budgeting and material things. From this survey, one can say that the staff is more concerned with the development than the maintenance planning. However, it is a necessity to evaluate the availability of resources before setting the goals. Hopkins et al (1994, p178) argues that if in the planning there is no concern for resources availability it will lead to failure.

The teaching staff in School X seem to agree with the idea of action plans as presented by Hargreaves and Ho