SWOT Analysis

Using the tools of business in class

For a few years the boundaries between education, business and the voluntary sector are blurring. Most of our customers are primary schools, I run a small business and I’m a trustee of a well established voluntary organisation – so I’ve seen this first hand.

There is a fantastic book by Jim Collins which also shows this. Today on twitter a group of teachers suggested adding SWOT analysis as part of their reports.

A few months ago I was a member of a group in a voluntary sector meeting where a ‘professional facilitator’ was helping us through a SWOT analysis. The best I can say about her facilitation is that she was all over the place – as defined here.

A very powerful way to look at SWOT analysis is this -

Strengths and weaknesses are internal.
Opportunities and threats are external.

What could this mean for pupils? Here’s how my SWOT could have looked as a 14 year old (year 10 in new money).

Strengths – able to grasp new ideas quickly, unfazed by new material,analytically very good
Weaknesses – seeks peer acceptance, tends to wander off, avoids PE like the plague, tired

Opportunities – with some application this pupil could get straight As through GCSEs and ‘A’ levels. He didn’t because the teachers knew nothing about the

Threats – the only one I’ll share here is the three paper rounds (morning,evening and Sundays). The school knew little, or nothing, about the external influences on many of our lives. Some of these threats were devastating for some of my fellow pupils.

I believe in the intervening twenty plus (a LOT) years school staff do know more about their pupils. But do they know enough to really answer the Threats question – external does include outside school.

What do you think?