Strategic planning is inevitable when aiming to effectively implement reforms of various spheres and when solving difficult problems. The main goals of preschool institutions are: striving to reach a full-fledged qualitative education, to properly use human and material resources as well as to make flexible action programme and guidelines, to introduce them to young citizens and help them to disgorge into the society.

Research problem: guidelines for action strategy are obscurely regulated in preschool education institutions. Organization management and human resources are used ineffectively. Modern preschool institution, facing constant change process, must be very flexible in order to survive as well as to provide high quality services. Only proper perception of the significance of strategy creation process will help heads of institutions to choose the right direction for development. In order to implement this process, the perception of the essence and significance of strategy is needed as well as the perception of the process of its creation and formation.

Research object: strategic planning of preschool education institutions.

The aim of research: to analyse the peculiarities of strategic planning in preschool education institutions and to provide recommendations for planning process improvement. The research is based on the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Research tasks:

1. To reveal the importance of strategic planning for the activities of preschool education institutions;

2. To analyse legal basis regarding strategic planning in Lithuanian education system;

3. To evaluate strategic plans of preschool education institutions and to highlight their drawbacks and benefits;

4. To reveal the attitudes of heads and pedagogues of preschool education institutions towards the peculiarities of strategic planning.

Hypothesis: strategic planning in preschool institutions is formal, employees are not enough involved in the process of strategic planning.

Research results revealed that strategic analyses were only partly carried out, not all factors that are indicated in the strategic planning methodology were examined, and, if they were, this was done only partly. In addition, they lacked concreteness; implementation deadlines, resources and executants were not determined; evaluation criteria were not always clear. After respondent survey, it was determined that not enough attention is paid to the processes of strategic planning: part of members of preschool institution communities do not influence action strategy of their institution, they do not participate in the activity of strategy creation groups. The interview with heads of institutions revealed that a head should be the initiator of the main strategic goals as well as to participate in the change process related to a specific institution. Unfortunately, pedagogues are not enough active, they simply tend to carry out orders instead of initiating changes. All these results confirm MA hypothesis.

Raktažodžiai: strategic planning, strategic plans of preschool education institutions, programme evaluation, evaluation criteria