I. Organisational Background
Al-Izzah Islamic School is a privately-owned school situated in the most stunning quarter in East Java, Indonesia. It was officially established in 2007 and is committed to offer an alternative education at the secondary level (12-14 years old-aged students). The school seeks to provide a holistic education to ensure that the practices and breath of education also cover the learners’ ethical and spiritual appeal through the integration of the religious, intellectual and philosophical sciences. To do so, the school adopts the holistic instruction that integrates the national and international curricula (Cambridge International Examination (CIE) and ADNI international school
Presently the school has 225 students distributed in the three levels of study and six classrooms. All of them are female and required to live in the school’s dormitory during their study. The school has more than 30 full-time teachers and 4 administration and technical support staff working five days a week. As a brand new institution, it has gained a well-reputation for its innovation and initiatives in learning and educational management facilitating most of its students to gain excellent achievement both in the local and national tests and competitions. In addition to its academic standing, in the last recent years the school has been nominated as an environmentally-friendly school model (
II. Stakeholders Analysis
Boschken, Rainey and Steinbauer acknowledged that analysing the stakeholders is an indispensable part of conducting SWOT analysis for it provides clearer descriptions of what should be accomplished by the organisation as well as the viable course of action of how to achieve it (as cited in Bryson, 2004).
At Al-Izzah Islamic School, more than a half of the identified stakeholders possess high degree of influence to school’s decision-making and practices. As outlined in the table-1, the financial bodies and foundation have the most prominent voices in decision-making critical for establishing the whole school system and structure. However, in the school setting, the school administrators are the key factors followed by the school council, parents, staff, students, local government and superintendents. International organisation partners give medium effects since they are quite flexible in their partnership agreement. Faith community and neighbourhood are also in medium position since they mostly support the existing school policies. The local media is also viewed influential to build positive image important to other stakeholders.
Table-1. Stakeholder analysis
| No | Stakeholders | Degree of Influence | Comments |
| 1 | School Board Members | Low | · Influences and controls the government policies and decision making in the national and district level; assures education quality and evaluates effectiveness of educational policies and practices. |
| 2 | National and Local Government Bodies | High | · Shape the school’s actions and policies; in some cases even confine innovations and control the financial supports; directly monitor the school operation; and in some cases take a legal action to close down the school operation when the school is proven against the laws and policies. |
| 3 | Superintendents | High | · Provide direct advices to the school; ensure that the school practices have met the national standard and policies; give direct suggestions to the school administration; and have important voices in the school accreditation process. |
| 4 | Financial Bodies and Foundation | High | · Possess a major authority in decision-making and budgeting; give a major direction to school policies and actions; manage the infrastructure development; and have the power to hire and fire staff and the site administrators. |
| 5 | School Council Members | Medium | · Influence and monitors policies and decision making in the school level; directly play a critical role in determining the school spending and income; and ensure the accountability and transparency of the school operation. |
| 6 | School Administrators | High | · Determine the academic quality and overall performances of students, staff, parents and other related stakeholders; shape the leadership characteristics and effectiveness of the school; set the financial priority; and maintain the daily operation of the school. |
| 7 | Teachers | High | · Deliver the instruction; supervise and motivate students; monitor and evaluate effectiveness of students learning and instruction; influences school decision-making; and determine the quality of the graduates. |
| 8 | Administration and Supporting staff | High | · Influence decision-making and policies; manage important documents and letters; provide the learning resources; facilitate teachers and students in the teaching-learning process; and communicate information among the school members. |
| 9 | Students’ Parents | High | · Influences the school decision-making and policies; directly shape the students’ learning behaviours; build public opinion about the school; and ensure a quality education for their children. |
| 10 | Students | High | · Participate in the learning process; influence the decision-making and policies; determine the success of education process in a whole. |
| 11 | | Medium | · Indirectly influences the decision-making in budgeting and regulations; shape the academic tone of the students and staff; determine and ensure the quality of the graduates through checkpoints. |
| 12 | | Medium | · Indirectly influences the decision-making and budgeting; shape the academic tone of the students and staff; improve the quality of the graduates. |
| 13 | Outsourcing Instructors | Low | · Facilitate extra curricula activities but have to agree with the school policies and learning standard |
| 14 | Faith Community and neighborhood | Medium | · Very pleased and support the school and mostly school cultures and policies agree with their expectation. |
| 15 | Local Media | Medium | · Build public opinion about the school influential for the school reputation and existence. |
III. Environmental Assessments
An effective environmental scanning provides essential information that is valuable for school’s existence and success (Bryson, 2004, p. 129). It helps team members to see the school from the whole perspective of both internal and external environment that in conjunction with stakeholder analysis makes the SWOT analysis possible. The external environment assessment is intended to scan the environment outside of the school to identify the viable opportunities and threats that cannot be controlled by the school. It is carried out by scanning the trends and developments of five observable dimensions; social, political, economic, technological, and geographical (see table-2). The internal environmental scanning, on the other hand, deals with the internal environment of the school aimed to identify the school’s strengths and weaknesses that are mostly controllable (see table-3).
Table-2: The external environmental assessments
| No | Elements | Trends and Developments |
| 1 | Social | In the last decade the public awareness that education can offer better social and economy life is getting stronger. Accordingly, a lot of parents from rural and remote areas send their children to study in the cities including to Al-Izzah Islamic School. |
| The growing of moral degradation in the last few years has initiated people to seek education/schools which have a strong commitment to both their students’ intellectual and ethical development which met the future challenges. | ||
| The adoption of international curricula in Indonesian secondary schools has been criticised by many since it has potential for creating social problems and educational commercialism. This has encouraged schools adopting international curricula including Al-Izzah to be more professional and transparent in managing the international class programs. | ||
| 2 | Political | The government’s support of the adoption of international education in its secondary schools has given access and legalisation for the school including Al-Izzah to adopt the international curricula and cooperate with a number of educational institutions from other countries. |
| The new law on teachers aimed at improving teacher and lecturer’s teaching quality including recognition of teacher as profession, teacher qualification, certification, and incentive scheme has driven many schools including Al-Izzah to adopt more modern educational management and system. | ||
| The school based management system initiated by the government has given autonomy for schools including Al-Izzah to manage the school and develop local curriculum. | ||
| 3 | Economic | In the last few years, the Indonesian government has initiated a legal framework for reforming the national education resulting in the increase of national budget spending on education reaching 20% of total national expenditure that expands the school financial support. |
| The increase of teachers’ incentives initiated by the government has emerged positive image on teaching profession which motivates more people to engage in education field that make competent teachers more widely available. | ||
| The stable interest rates during the last decade have encouraged the school to gain more funding from bank and private sectors to develop the school infrastructure and facilities. | ||
| 4 | Technological | The revolution of information technology has made learning more challenging and borderless that motivates the school to integrate ICT in the students’ learning. Driven by this belief the teachers and staff are equipped with a personal notebook with internet wireless connection around the school. |
| The wider uses of technology in broad context of life and workplace have driven the school administrators to put a priority in the development of technological structure. | ||
| 5 | Geographical | The city where the school is located has a renowned reputation for its beauty and friendly community supporting for learning. |
| The icon of educational city with numerous tourism attractions has been intensively introduced by the local district government which significantly attracts newcomers and students to attend to Al-Izzah. |
Table-3: The internal environmental assessments
| No | Elements | Trends and Developments |
| 1 | Organisational structure | Collaboration with external stakeholders (international bodies) and school committee is promoted. The distribution of job descriptions among school members are made clearer and balanced. Although hierarchical structure still exists in the school, in the last two years the foundation body seems less authoritative in the school setting indicated by its less involvement in the school operational process. |
| 2 | School culture | As the school maintain holistic education for all students, the moral values and attitude of all school members are also reflected in both daily and classroom interaction which is based on respect, politeness, and modesty. Cleanliness of the neighbourhood and care of other will be the main feature that is rarely found in other school. All students are treated equally and share the same responsibility both as students and the community member in dormitory. |
| 3 | School leadership | The school is led by a visionary leader with strong commitment for developing world class Islamic school. However, it is still lack focus on priority and planning. It is good at identifying opportunities and threats but less focus on current weakness and strengths which potentially raises tension between the leader and staff. |
| 4 | School climates | Collaborative teaching and learning is highly promoted by the school. Teachers are engaged in lesson studies, peer teaching practices and evaluation. As the medium of communication using Arabic and English in daily basis is encouraged. Critical thinking and problem solving is seen as the fundamental part of students’ learning. In addition, the supporting climate and stunning landscape around the school creates a conducive environment. |
| 5 | ICT in the school | The employment of ICT in teaching and learning is viewed essential by the school. Accordingly, at the moment ICT instalment among the units becomes a priority. However, the current ICT application is still associated with PowerPoint slides and videos as the result of lack of ICT trainings and unclear policy on the exploitation of ICT in school. |
| 6 | School resources | The school seems financially stable since the ideal number of the enrolled students has been achieved. The school has been annually granted 100 million by the government. The basic infrastructure for delivering instructions has also been established and the number of staff has been statistically proportional. However, as the teachers are dominantly young and fresh graduates, ongoing trainings should be given. |
| 7 | School core competency | The school and administrators has built networks and partnership with overseas bodies sharing the same mission and vision. Most of the administrators have lots experiences progressive managerial approaches. Most of the teachers are young learning professionals with strong commitment, creative and motivated. The holistic curriculum offered by the school meets the current expectation. The school’s infrastructure and learning facilities are made for learning and its geographical situation are conducive. |
| 8 | School Rigidity | Al-Izzah has a strong vision and even capability to go global; however, there is still a fundamental question to answer whether the religious and secular educational approaches can be melted without the elimination of another? In budgeting system, the school has also been able to fulfil its daily operational needs, but, it does not have sustainable business units that provide reliable funding for the school practices. |
IV. SWOT Analysis
By considering the results of both the stakeholder and environmental analysis performed above, the SWOT analysis is carried out by identifying the school’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (Katsioloudes, 2002; Bryson, 2004). The detail summary of this analysis is presented in the following table.
Table-4. Summary of SWOT Analysis
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| · The current curriculum has agreed with the school mission and vision · Well experienced and progressive site administrators · Innovative teaching and learning approaches · Well school reputation for its excellence in both academic and religious achievements · Has a visionary leadership · Dominated by vigorous and dedicated learning professionals · Situated in beautiful landscapes · Gained international networks for students’ exchange · Uniqueness of school culture and climate · Dominated by middle class economy parents · Dedicated for female students only | · Lack of understanding of the school mission and mission among the main stakeholders · No written documents of strategic planning · Lack of planning · No clear definitions of key success indicators · Dedicated for female students only · No sustainable (self) funding resources · Inadequate learning resources and book collections · Lack of teachers’ knowledge and skills in ICT · Lack of interaction with other schools and local government · Low incentives and rewards for staff · Less democratic and distributed leadership |
| Opportunities | Threats |
| · The raise of public (parents) awareness of the importance of holistic education · The growing number of middle-class economy parents · The government’s strong commitment to improve national education quality and reputation among OECD countries · The increase of market demand for qualified female workforces · Become a leading school in the country · Increase effectiveness · Build sustainable (self) funding resources · Build democratic and distributed leadership | · The emergence of similar schools with better educational management system · Unpredictable economic situation that reduces financial support and purchasing power · Lack of professional and dedicated staff hamper good governance of the school · Reputation damage if the school fails to accomplish its mission and vision or to meet the stakeholders’ expectation · Inconsistent government’s educational policies and laws impede the school efforts and strategies |
V. References
Bryson, J. M. (2004). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organisations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organisational achievement. Jossey-Bass:
Katsioloudes, M.I. (2002). Global strategy planning: Cultural perspectives for profit and nonprofit organisations. Butterworth-Heinemann:
