Five-year strategic plan for Education board

CHIEF Kearney says last plan helped ETB manage challenges

Members of the Cavan-Monaghan Education and Training Board have welcomed a new strategic plan, which maps out the objectives, aims, goals and values of the local educational organisation for the next five years.

Drawn up by Dublin-based RA Consulting, the plan was conceived following a series of in-depth interactions with members of the ETB executive, school and college principals, teachers and other stakeholders.

Peter Ryan of RA Consulting explained that one of the primary concerns was the “safety and well-being” of students, a subject being given increased prominence in the wider pastoral sense within education.

The first five-year strategic plan for the ETB came into being under the stewardship of outgoing Chief Executive, John Kearney, and his successor will be the person to oversee the implementation of the new plan.

Included is provision for future investment in ICT and to expand on elements such as psychological supports, as well as to promote CMETB, its brand, and greater awareness of the services it provides.

Speaking to the Celt, Mr Kearney explained the importance for any organisation to have a strategic plan in place.

“It’s the pathway in terms of future development growth,” he said. “We’ve had a very successful last five years. Our last strategy statement I feel served the organisation well, but also I think it’s important that we used it to ground ourselves in what it is we actually do.”

Emphasising the section that underlines ‘Values’ of the ETB organisation, Mr Kearney continued: “Our core values, a lifetime of commitment to education and training across the two counties, that is what we stand for, with our students to the front of that, and the communities we serve standing behind us.”

He notes that the last strategy also assisted in guiding the ETB through the many challenges that emerged over the past five years, including the pandemic.

“The whole concept of strategic planning has changed. Now you must be able to think and plan on your feet. Covid has changed our ways in how a static five-year plan wouldn’t have been much good, with every school in the country closed. People had to adapt. In terms of technology, developments in that respect were brought 10 years forward. So we reflected on our strategy statement and the flexibility within that, and what elements we needed to carry forward into the next.

“Of course no one saw the pandemic coming, or could foresee what it would change it would have on society, but we as an organisation, as a sector even, managed well I feel, through embracing that change and working with our students and our communities, by communicating clearly with them our plans and our ambitions.”

He adds: “Our new plan sets our objectives for the next five years but that’s not to say we might need to change something along the way, whatever may happen, and different priorities might emerge. But if that does happen, we have the strategic plan in place that gives us the confidence to be able to respond with the planning infrastructure to respond to that.”