Our college has printed up and distributed thousands of little cards with our mission statement, our vision, our organisational values and our strategic aims on them.

I won't comment for the moment. Let's see what you think of them.

Mission
The mission of South Birmingham College is to provide high quality vocational education and training opportunities in response to local need and which put learners first.

Vision
The vision for SBC is that it will transform itself into a first class educational, economic and social resource which is valued and held in high esteme by the students, employers and communities we exist to serve.

Organisational Values
-SBC believes that its students are the most important members of the college and that it is the responsibility of all college staff to help them achieve their full potential.

-SBC is proud of the fact that it is a multi-racial, multi-cultural college. The college is opposed to all forms of racism, sexism or any other violent, abusive and irrational discriminatory behaviour and is striving to become socially inclusive. The college believes that all students and staff are entitled to respect and parity of esteem, and to work and study in a welcoming, safe and non threatening environment.

-SBC values its staff and will help them develop their skills and expertise. The college will also do its utmost to provide good working conditions and job satisfaction.

quote:

SBC values its staff and will help them develop their skills and expertise.

*snorts derisively*

You snorted derisively, I chuckled cynically and perhaps a little sadly.

Mind you, a mission statement is a statement of intent. That it might not represent the present situation is not necessarily wrong. What should happen is that all know it, believe in it and work towards achieving it.

Sadly many organisations, having spent thousands on developing a mission statement, then simply leave it around to gather figurative dust.

Indeed. I was more interested in seeing what people think of it as a mission statement etc rather than whether or not it's applied.

quote:

... which put learners first

They appear to have lost track of their sentence, starting with a singular subject and ending with a plural verb.

quote:

Mission
The mission of South Birmingham College is to provide high quality vocational education and training opportunities in response to local need and which put learners first.

Grammatically it is very suspect. It would be better if the reference to local needs were parenthesised (and put in the plural). So:

Mission
The mission of South Birmingham College is to provide high quality vocational education and training opportunities, in response to local needs, which put learners first.

Seeing as though it's you, Bob, I won't charge my normal re-write fee but will accept a pint of Ma Pardoe's best when I'm in the area.

I would prefer:

The mission of South Birmingham College is to provide high quality vocational education and training opportunities which respond to local needs and put learners first.

That's even better.

Hmmm, but isn't "puts students first" a dangling modifier? It almost sounds to me as though it's saying (though it wouldn't make sense of course) "which responds to (1) local needs and (2) puts learners first.

Does "puts learners first" belong in the mission at all? It is clearly in the vision. I'd cut it. Remember, these are to be elevator statements; that is, the mission is simple enough that you can tell it to someone in an elevator.

quote:

Sadly many organisations, having spent thousands on developing a mission statement, then simply leave it around to gather figurative dust.

This is a sentiment that is very close to my heart. I see anything along the lines of a mission statement as just a load of politically correct, jargon laden, claptrap (I'll refrain from anything stronger). I once worked at a school where we devoted more Inset time to developing a new mission statement than anything else yet it achieved nothing. It seemed to me that it was something to print and show people but not something that had any relation to what was actually happening or was likely to happen. These days I make a point of never reading mission statements as my experience of them is that they are nothing more than worthless and pointless crap that wastes paper and keeps printers and administrators in lucrative employment.

I have made an exception with the Mission Statement posted here as I have actually read it but it hasn't changed my view of them. It appears to say nothing but the perfectly obvious given the nature of the organisation and has reinforced my belief that they are a complete waste of time, effort and paper.

Bah, Humbug!

Learners come first at South Birmingham College, where they receive high quality vocational education and training opportunities to satisfy community needs.

Much better, Jerry.

Doad, surely I agree with you that organizations spend way too much time writing their mission statement, mostly because they have no idea how to write it. However, I do think a well-written one can keep the organization on track. Whenever we have a big initiative to think about, we always go back to our mission statement. It has provided a lot of guidance.

However, we hired a big-bucks consultant to write it and spent days in a retreat with our Board of Directors. So, it was costly indeed.

quote:

This is a sentiment that is very close to my heart. I see anything along the lines of a mission statement as just a load of politically correct, jargon laden, claptrap (I'll refrain from anything stronger).

Perhaps you might direct the mission statement mongers to your own student's query regarding the reason for schools on this board! A nice brief Apologia pro schola nostra?" (Did I get that right, you Latin scholars?

Probably the first ever mission statement, made back around 1904 before the term was even known, was when Claude Johnson, Royce's factory manager, said, "Gentlemen, we want to make The Best Car in the World".

So clear is that mission statement that, for 100 years, rightly or wrongly, most people believe the Rolls-Royce to be just that - the Best Car in the World.

That, to my mind, is what a mission statement should be: clear, concise, memorable and believable.

OK. Now I'll give my views on it.

The first thing that struck me was the poor grammar in the mission statement. I couldn't believe that after all that time, effort and money they could let such an obvious error through. Did no-one once try to read it out and see how it sounded?

Ignoring that it struck me as unnecessary, it boils down to "We are a college. We do the things a college is supposed to do."
That said at least it's short.

Then I looked at the Vision Statement

The vision for SBC is that it will transform itself into a first class educational, economic and social resource which is valued and held in high esteem by the students, employers and communities we exist to serve.

I chuckled again at the implication that we are currently none of those things, else how could we transform into them. Not a good selling point I thought.

The first of the organisational values comes under the heading of "stating the bleedin' obvious", the second under the heading of "obeying the law of the land" and the third under the heading of "I'll believe it when I see it."

None of them in my view needs stating explicitly at all.

In other words the whole thing is a waste of time, effort and money except on the grounds that the educational establishment requires all the nonsense to be done if you wish to keep getting funding for the college.