The department’s strategic planning and management includes business, financial and budget planning processes and policy management to achieve strategic outcomes.

Risk management is an integral part of the department’s planning and management processes and an essential function of good governance.

Planning

Our planning system starts with the department’s strategic plan, and covers:

• corporate services
• sites (preschools and schools)
• individual personal development plans.

Our planning, monitoring and reporting are dependent on each other. The information reported feeds back into the planning process to help make decisions about the direction of the department.

Department for Education strategic plan

The strategic plan (PDF 1.4 MB) is the highest level planning tool for the department, with all other plans following on from it. It outlines what we aim to achieve and our key priorities and strategies. It guides our decisions when allocating resources against each of the 5 key areas:

• challenging learning
• quality people
• strong engagement
• better support
• targeted resources.

Strategic management framework

The strategic management framework supports the planning, implementation and delivery of the strategic plan. The focus for the strategic management framework is to provide a cohesive, coordinated, transparent approach to connecting strategic planning, operational planning, performance review and the implementation of strategy and system reforms within the governance, risk and performance development frameworks.

The aim for the strategic management framework is to establish an articulated clear line of sight from the strategic plan through to the annual business plans and individual performance development plans.

Risk management

The department is committed to making risk management a part of all our operations and business culture. We see risk management as the responsibility of all employees, including contractors, business partners and volunteers.

Our department's Chief Executive is accountable to the Minister for developing and implementing a risk management policy.

The risk management policy (staff login required) embeds risk management into the governance and practices of the department.