Core
Strategic school improvement for independent schools
The strategic plan that stays alive between board meetings
Purpose, values, objectives and strategic initiatives held as one governed strategy, with every initiative typed, owned and measured.
EthosOne Strategic Planning is the strategic school improvement module in EthosOne Core, governance, risk and compliance software built only for schools.
It is built for principals, business managers, board chairs and initiative leads, and it is part of Core, included with every EthosOne licence.
What we keep hearing
It is 3:20 and the bell has gone. The principal has a parent at 3:30, a staffing conversation at four and an incident form from period five that has not been signed. The chair rings about the building appeal and asks, on the way off the phone, how the strategic plan is tracking. Somewhere in that afternoon, the plan still has to be alive.
This is the room where it is, with owners and measures rather than a memory of the launch.
Four views, one picture. Each one reads from the same live records.
01Strategy, the governed plan in one place
The current strategy holds purpose, vision, mission, values and objectives on one page, with every earlier strategy archived rather than overwritten.
02Initiatives, the whole portfolio on a Gantt
Every initiative sits on one timeline with its status, so the board sees the whole portfolio and what is running late at a glance.
03Initiative detail, from rationale to executable work
An initiative opens to its rationale, its RASCI, its measures of success and the risks it depends on, so the plan and the work stay joined.
04Reports, a board artefact you can reproduce
A strategy report is generated from the live plan against the school's own template, frozen for the board and reproducible later.
Strategic Planning is where risk-led insight becomes intentional response. A treatment in the risk register becomes an initiative here, its activities reach named people as actions, evidence returns to the initiative, and the Reports tab hands a frozen snapshot to board reporting. Delivery schedules live in Projects and schedules; the whole picture shows on the school dashboard.
Strategic delivery becomes stronger when it sits inside the school's wider governance system.
Draft with AI knows your context and proposes strategy language, objectives and the questions a board would ask.
Inside an initiative it drafts problem statements, work breakdowns, RASCI allocations and measures; in Reports it drafts questions, moves and executive narrative from the sources you selected. Nothing is saved until you apply it. Classification, ownership and publication stay with you. The helper cannot reclassify an initiative silently, cannot choose the Accountable person and cannot publish; source values stay deterministic.
Sovereign frontier AI, hosted in Sydney and Melbourne.What it does not do
- It does not show non-strategic initiatives in the Strategy view.
- It does not treat ICT, capital, house or operational projects as strategic unless they are explicitly classified that way.
- It does not count an initiative as executable without activities, measures and an accountable owner.
- Stored in AustraliaAWS Sydney and Melbourne, one database per school
- AI stays in the country tooHosted in Sydney and Melbourne; never trained on your content
- Published, not describedOur policies in the Trust Centre · How we handle your data
Blackfriars Priory School went from demo to live in under a month.
The seven we are asked every time.
Still weighing something up? Thirty minutes with us, on your own registers, answers the rest.
Book your school a demo01What is strategic school improvement software?
It turns a school's strategic plan, its purpose, values, objectives and initiatives, into owned, measured work. In EthosOne each initiative has an owner, RASCI-allocated activities, KPI or OKR measures and linked risks, and progress rolls into a frozen board report.
02How is this different from a strategic plan document?
A document records intent at a point in time. Here the strategy is versioned, past strategies are kept as they were, and every initiative carries dated activities and measures, so the board reads a status rather than a story.
03Why does an initiative need one Accountable person?
Responsible may be several people; Accountable is exactly one, and an initiative does not activate until that role is filled.
04Can capital projects be tracked here too?
Yes. Initiatives are typed strategic, ICT, capital, operational, house or other. Capital projects appear on the Gantt beside the strategy they serve and stay out of the Strategy view unless you classify them as strategic.
05Is strategic planning an extra module?
No. Strategic Planning is part of Core, alongside reporting, projects, actions, tracking and reminders.
06Our strategic plan went nowhere. What changes?
Plan to initiatives to measures to named accountability, on the same spine as everything else, so progress reports itself rather than being chased. Strategic planning is included in the core platform, which means the first thing you fix costs nothing extra. Because it sits beside the risk register and the compliance calendar, the board sees delivery and exposure in one picture rather than two separate papers.
07Core, in full: what does it cover?
It holds a school's purpose, vision, mission, values, objectives and strategic initiatives as one governed strategy, archives past strategies, and classifies every initiative as strategic, ICT, capital, operational, house or other. Each initiative carries an owner, activities with RASCI allocation, KPI or OKR measures and linked risks, and the Reports tab freezes a reproducible board artefact from that live record.
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More free templates and tools
When the chair asks on the way off the phone,the answer is already current.
Strategic Planning in EthosOne Core turns a school strategy into typed initiatives, RASCI, measures and board reports.
