Education programmes require management. This is no different than any other enterprise.
There are certain specialised administration and management concerns in the implementation of a
programme:
But in general education teams rely on the standard techniques of management. While there are
different ways in which people describe best practice in management, a simple categorisation
assists those who perhaps have more educational expertise than management expertise.
PLOC, or Planning, Leadership, Organisation, and Control, establishes the four functional areas
within which one or more people, or a team of people, exercises management to achieve intended
outcomes and to reduce unintended outcomes.
Planning refers to the setting of objectives, the aligning of resources, the assessment of
strengths and weakness, and the identification of opportunities and threats that result in an
operational programme.
Leadership concerns those behaviours that align the organisation with the stated objectives
and motivate and challenge staff to their achievement. Leadership might also be concerned with
the positioning of the organisation to ensure its continued effectiveness.
Organisation deals with the construction of the necessary means to achieve the objectives.
This includes procedures, policies, teams, operating units, and other systems.
Control, sometime softened to coordination, indicates the need to manage the
achievement of objectives. This includes systems to monitor their achievement, rewards and
nonperformance consequences, reporting and auditing, and so on. Control is achieved in different
ways in different organisations.
