Australian schools are entering a decade that feels fundamentally different from the one just passed.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future consideration. It is already reshaping how students learn, how teachers assess, and how work itself is performed. Social cohesion feels thinner. Questions once considered settled – about identity, schooling models, and the purpose of education – are being reopened. Teacher shortages persist. Flexible work has altered expectations of employment. Families are questioning whether annual fee increases of six or seven per cent are sustainable in a high cost-of-living environment.

None of these forces is temporary. And none of them can be addressed through better planning alone.

Yet many schools are responding by doing precisely that and planning harder. Adding initiatives. Refining documents. Seeking reassurance that the future can be managed with enough effort.

The discomfort many Principals feel is not a failure of leadership. It is a signal that the context has changed.

The real question facing school leaders now is not, “What is our next plan?”

It is, “Are we clear about the future we are preparing this school to survive – and thrive – within?”

Planning assumes continuity. Strategy assumes disruption.

Most strategic planning in schools is built on an unspoken assumption: that the future will look broadly like the past, only slightly more complex.

Planning works best in stable environments. It optimises systems, allocates resources, and improves execution. It is necessary. But it is not sufficient when the environment itself is shifting.

The next ten to twenty years will not reward schools that optimise for continuity. They will reward schools that can adapt deliberately without losing coherence.

This is where many schools begin to drift.

They are not strategically stuck. They are strategically busy. Responding to pressure without re-choosing direction. Adding activity without clarifying intent. Confusing motion with progress.

Strategy, properly understood, is not about producing a plan. It is about making choices in the face of uncertainty.

Choices about what the school will protect. What will it let go of? And what it will deliberately become better at over time.

Why a 20-year horizon changes leadership behaviour

Most school strategies are written for five years. Capital plans might stretch to ten. Very few leadership conversations genuinely consider what kind of school will be needed twenty years from now.

That short horizon shapes behaviour in predictable ways.

Leaders optimise for stability. Boards seek reassurance. Risk is managed down rather than designed through. Decisions are justified by precedent rather than future relevance.

A longer horizon forces a different set of questions.

• If assessment becomes increasingly automated, what remains distinctly human about learning in this school?
• If fee growth slows or reverses, what value is truly non-negotiable for families?
• If teacher supply remains constrained, what staffing model can actually endure?
• If social fragmentation increases, what does community really mean in practice?

These are not operational questions. They are identity questions.

And identity is extremely difficult to retrofit once the environment has already shifted.

Introducing Scenario-Informed Strategy

One way schools can respond more deliberately to this uncertainty is through what I call Scenario-Informed Strategy.

Scenario-Informed Strategy starts with the future, not the present.

Instead of asking, “What should we do next year?”, it asks:

“If the world shifts in plausible but uncertain ways over the next twenty years, what kind of school would we need to have become for those futures not to break us?”

Those future scenarios are not predictions. They are aspirational and plausible pictures of success under uncertainty.

They are then drawn back into the present to clarify:

• Which assumptions is the school currently relying on
• Which strategic choices matter most now
• Where risk is genuinely concentrated rather than vaguely felt

This is not forecasting. It is future-back sense-making.

Assumptions are the fundamental unit of strategy

In Scenario-Informed Strategy, plans are temporary. Assumptions are critical. Direction is stable.

Most school strategies rest on assumptions that are rarely named, let alone tested. Assumptions about enrolment demand. Fee tolerance. Workforce availability. Pedagogical relevance. Parent trust. Regulatory stability.

When those assumptions remain implicit, schools plan confidently into futures that no longer exist.

A core discipline of Scenario-Informed Strategy is to make assumptions explicit and visible, particularly those that carry the greatest risk if they prove false.

This immediately changes the quality of the leadership conversation. The focus shifts from defending plans to understanding exposure.

From five-year plans to annual assumption testing

Scenario-Informed Strategy does not require schools to rewrite their strategy every year. In fact, it argues the opposite.

Long-term strategic intent should remain relatively stable. What must change more frequently is the testing of the assumptions underlying it.

An annual cadence is often sufficient. Each year, leaders and Boards can ask:

• Which assumptions still hold?
• Which are weakening?
• Which have proven wrong?
• What have we learned from choices that did not work?

This last question is fundamental.

Boards often ask what the plan is and how risks are being managed. Far fewer ask which strategic choices have failed and what has been learned from them.

Yet learning from failed choices is one of the most reliable indicators of strategic maturity.

Using VUCA to support better governance questions

To support this dialogue, some schools are beginning to assess key assumptions using a VUCA lens.

Each assumption is assessed based on its level of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

This does not turn governance into a technical exercise. It does the opposite. It gives Boards a shared language to prioritise attention and ask better questions.

Rather than asking, “Are we worried about this?”, Boards can ask:

“Has the VUCA profile of this assumption changed since last year?”

That shift reduces emotion, avoids micromanagement, and keeps the focus on strategic learning rather than operational detail.

Over time, it also creates institutional memory. Boards can see how uncertainty is evolving and whether leadership thinking is adapting accordingly.

What this means for Principals and Boards

For Principals and executive teams, Scenario-Informed Strategy restores agency. Not by pretending certainty exists, but by clarifying what can still be chosen.

For Boards, it requires a subtle but significant shift. Away from asking for reassurance through plans, and toward enabling leadership through inquiry.

The most future-ready schools are not those with the most detailed strategies. They are those with the most apparent intent and the discipline to revisit their assumptions regularly.

The next ten to twenty years will challenge Australian schools in ways that cannot be fully predicted.

But uncertainty does not have to lead to drift.

Clarity of direction, disciplined assumption testing, and better questions at the governance table will matter far more than perfect answers.

The future will not reward schools that plan harder.

It will reward schools that choose more deliberately who they are becoming.