What We Believe sets out GSE’s positions on the questions that come up most often in international schools. Each piece stands on its own, so there is no order to read them in, and the collection grows as we write.
These are positions rather than procedures: who the experts in a school actually are, what a crowded curriculum costs, whether running for profit changes what a school is, and what technology does and does not do for learning. The pieces below were written in 2020 and are being revisited as the ground shifts, starting with education technology, which is due an account of what artificial intelligence has changed. More are being added on governance, safeguarding, admissions, appointing a head, and what makes a school financially sustainable.
Personality Type and Profile Conventions in School Leadership
School leadership attracts a narrow set of personality profiles. What the leadership workshops of the 1990s revealed, and what it means for the teams heads build around them.
Give Teachers Back Their Schools
Deming made Japanese car plants more productive by handing control back to the people doing the work. Schools have the same opportunity and rarely take it.
Un-Clutter the Cluttered Curriculum
Circus skills, personal finance, values, yoga. Every new priority is added to the curriculum and nothing is ever taken out. What that costs a school in time.
Authenticity and Integrity – How do we really know?
Authenticity and integrity are values every school claims and few ever test. A set of questions a leadership team can put to itself.
Why STEM needed to Expand its Mission by turning into STEAM
STEM became a priority because too few students were choosing those degrees. Adding the arts changed what the subjects were for, not just what they were called.
Profit Versus Non-profit Schools
Whether a school distributes its surplus says little about whether it is any good. The tension between the academic and commercial sides is a translation problem, under either model.
Parents – Helping Children Learn Faster and Retain More
Parents build character, confidence and motivation long before a school does. What the research says about the home contribution, and how schools can use it.
Faking the Carbon Footprint in Schools
Schools pay for the green building and then never collect the savings. What metering, targeting and tracking energy consumption actually involves.
Humans in the AI Loop: What Schools Owe Their Students Now
A school’s account of whether a child is learning rests on work the child produces. When that work can be generated in seconds, the school loses its instrument.
Data-driven Decisions that Deliver High Performance
Data-driven decision making is an approach to leadership that values decisions that can be backed up with verifiable data. The success of the data-driven approach is reliant upon the quality of the data gathered and the effectiveness of its analysis and interpretation.
Vision and Mission Integrity: Closing the Gap Between What Schools Say and What They Do
Most schools have a vision and mission worth reading. Fewer have one worth watching. An audit for closing the gap between the statement on the wall and the decisions taken in the building.
The Signature School Experience
What a school is actually known for, as distinct from what it says in its prospectus, and why most attempts to manufacture one fail.
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