How to make a plan for school facilities?

To make a good plan of the required school facilities, you need to spend a fair amount of time, considering what facilities you need exactly. Besides, you should discuss it with your stakeholders and partners and establish a school facility management system. It seems like a difficult task, with so many points to be mentioned. But why is it so important?

Well, having a precise plan of required school facilities will surely facilitate the process of improving and maintaining the school facilities. Moreover, to keep a certain level of education quality, the school constantly has to improve and renew its facilities. Therefore, the students are sure to get the best education possible. Besides, even if your school has the latest equipment, you will still not avoid the necessity to change after several years.

School facility planning and management might not be the easiest thing to do, but it is possible. Moreover, you can use school management software as assistance in your deal. Such programs are not only useful in organizing the educational process, but they may help you in creating your plan. So, what should your plan include, and how to bring it to life?

Main points of your school facilities plan

Every plan has an aim: to get the result from work. But to get good results, you need to determine a couple more things, like schedules and spending. So, here are the main points of your perfect plan:

1. The required facilities. First, you have to make a list of the required school facilities and equipment. This is a tricky and, in some way, routine task, yet absolutely crucial. Usually, it includes ordinary objects like desks, whiteboards, class equipment, etc. Realizing what you really need will help to calculate spending and terms of fulfillment.
   
2. Expenses. Another important point of your plan is the sum of money you will have to spend. You see, your investors would like to see the exact figures, so they won’t be afraid to invest money into your school. Moreover, when you give them and your partners a clear plan and calculations, you will be more trustworthy. Besides, the financial plan will save your money from unnecessary spending.
   
3. Terms. Having an exact date when each stage has to be done is essential to succeed in school facility planning. Also, investors will support this idea as they know in what way their money is spent.  No one wants to give their money for nothing.
   
4. Results. That’s a brilliant idea to track all the processes: what is done and what’s not! Therefore, you will know for sure how many tasks are top priorities and what you have already accomplished; this is a good point of any business plan, and it also gives a sense of change to everyone involved.
   

Overall, here’s a small example of how’s your  school facilities calculations table has to be:

How to organize school facilities management committee

A plan is useless if there’s no one to bring it to life. Therefore, you should pull all these people together into a well-working group. Moreover, besides those who will run the process in school, you will need to negotiate with manufacturers and companies or wholesalers to get the equipment. So, who has to be on your committee?

• Stakeholders

Of course, those who invest money have to know what is going on with their funds and how they are used. You have two ways to find investors: ask parents for help, or address the government for financial aid.

• Parents’ committee

Involving all the parents of the class might be too difficult and unnecessary. But delegating some tasks for school facility planning to some small group of parents is a great solution. This will also improve parents' engagement in school life and, thereby, will help to establish a partnership between school and parents. Moreover, some parents are potential investors as they are the first ones interested in the school facilities improvement.

• Interested teaching staff

You should also include those teachers who are somehow connected with improvements. For example, if you want to renew the equipment of the PE class, then a PE teacher must be included; this will also facilitate making the plan, as only the teacher knows what is needed for their class.

But how can you organize effective work? Well, working in a team is a difficult task, yet if you divide and delegate the responsibilities, it will be much easier. Moreover, it will help to avoid unnecessary quarrels, which often occur in such situations.

Thus, you should create a small group of those who will negotiate with vendors and wholesalers, those who will make arrangements with investors, etc. This will let them focus on several tasks simultaneously and speed up the school facility management system process. Besides, that will give everyone a sense of involvement and value to teamwork.

All in all, establishing and managing a school facility improvement is a tricky and challenging task. However, there’s nothing impossible in this world when you have a good plan, a well-organized team, and the required resources to accomplish your tasks. School facilities improvement is an essential point of successful and comfortable education for our children. That's why we should do our best in this!

FAQs

• What is educational facilities planning?

It is usually quite a long process of determining the essential requirement for the educational process. Commonly it is completed with the help of questionnaires, seminars, and meetings, which help determine the list of required things.

• How can you improve school facilities?

First of all, the school requires a proper check out for determining the needed improvements. Secondly, creating surveys will show the proper results of what staff and students seem to lack. Generally, systematic check-outs and renewing old stuff to the up-to-date one are great solutions.

• What are the basic facilities a school must have?

Every school must have basic facilities, including standard premises for studying like classes, gyms, etc. Also, it includes proper working air ventilation, sanitary engineering, electricity provision, heating, and fire alarms. A lot of schools even add a security system

to decrease the possibilities of dangerous situations.

• What components should be included in a school strategic facilities plan?

When you make a school strategic facility plan, you should include the essential facilities like proper ventilation, lighting equipment, and water supply. After that, you can consider those facilities that may ease the educational process, i.e., desks, crayons, etc.