The purpose of the article is to develop a strategy for the forming a strong cluster of secondary vocational education in Russia. In the era of globalization, toughening competition in the global education market, high economic and political risks, the development and implementation of an educational institution development strategy requires a search for new approaches and the development of new methods and ways to implement it. The paper proposes a model of breakthrough positioning of institutions of secondary vocational education, by which it is possible to identify effective strategies of institutions and to carry out their ranking. The work carried out the positioning of institutions of secondary vocational education on the modified matrix of Cagan and Vogel and proposed strategies for their development in accordance with the position taken. The article developed a tool for identifying the strategic priorities of institutions of secondary vocational education, which allows to identify promising dominants of the strategic development of organizations and their financing. When using the positioning model, it is shown that not all types of positioning can be effectively used by an organization, and an untimely choice of a more promising strategy can be unsuccessful for an institution.