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The secretary asks you what stationery and office equipment you will need next year. You are busy so you jot down a few things. Next year you realize that you do not have any felt pens. You get angry with the secretary and she says, "But you didn’t ask". How much easier, quicker and more efficient it would have been if she had given you a comprehensive list of what you might need so that you could tick the ones which you did need. This is the basis of systematic thinking using checklists.

1. The simplest type of checklist, as in the above example, is made up of a list of ‘things’ that might be needed for a particular activity.
2. Another kind of checklist gives a systematic list of ‘procedures’ to be followed to perform a particular task. An ‘Organising a School Trip’ checklist would tell you all the things you need to do, and in what order, to organise a school trip. A ‘How to Write an Essay’ checklist would help students to be organised and systematic when engaging in this important task.`
3. The third type of checklist deals with events which are ‘fixed in time’ and it systematically lists when who should do what. The most obvious example is a master timetable but there is also the examination timetable which could state, amongst other things, when drafts exams have to be with the secretary for typing.

If you do not have checklists then you will begin with a blank sheet of paper and the chances are that you will forget something. This is not systematic, not easy and usually not very effective.

All checklists begin as a blank sheet of paper. Either an individual or a group of people brainstorm ideas to put on a list. This can then be circulated to other people to see if they can think of anything that is missing. Other missing things might be noticed when people begin to use the list. This is not a problem - add them. Some items on the list might never be used. This is not a problem - remove them. Thus, in time, you can have some very useful lists to help your school run more easily and systematically.

Below there is a table giving some examples of the three types of checklists. They have been categorized in terms of whether they would be used mainly by the Admin, by Departments or by students. Your tasks, working either individually or in groups, are as follows:

1. Add more examples to the lists (add more categories if you like)
2. Choose one example from each column and brainstorm items which might be included in the lists.

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