The use of Balanced Scorecard as a strategic performance management tool at schools

The purpose of this study is to determine the process through which Balanced Scorecard (BSC), which is used in many educational institutions around the world, could be employed as a strategic performance management tool in a real school environment in Turkey. It is also aimed, on the basis of the results of the applications in this particular school, to determine the important factors under which the development of BSC could be successfully achieved. This is a qualitative study and adopts a Design Based Research approach which is particularly useful to develop solutions to the problems encountered in the field of education. During the research, three questions are addressed as follows: (1) ?What are the steps that could be followed while developing BSC in a school in Turkey?? (2) ?What are the important factors that could be considered while developing BSC?? (3) What results are obtained from the use of BSC in the school?? The study was carried out in a private school, in the province of Gaziantep, where BSC was developed in the academic year of and applied 2009-2010. The developmental process of BSC is composed of two phases (planning and developing) and sixteen steps. To successfully achieve these steps and thus develop BSC, the study proposes twelve important factors for consideration. At the end of the study, strategic plan, strategy map, personal and institutional BSC for the school are developed. By using the strategy map, the schools? strategy was visually expressed on one page in which cause and effect relations were made explicit. After the application of personal and institutional BSCs during 2009-2010 academic year, evaluation works for 161 members of staff, academic and non-academic departments as well as the holistic performance of the school were undertaken. The evaluation results were used for rewarding purposes, career planning, personnel planning, termination of the work contracts, determination of the educational needs and construction of a databank. On the basis of performance evaluation, 77.5% of the objectives were found to be reached by the School.