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. Several began as pieces written in 2020 and have since been rewritten, including an account of what artificial intelligence has changed for education technology. Pieces on safeguarding and on admissions are still to come.
Give Teachers Back Their Schools
Deming raised quality by handing control back to the people doing the work. What that means for heads, owners and the teachers in front of the class.
Un-Clutter the Cluttered Curriculum
Every new priority is added to the curriculum and nothing is taken out. What that costs in hours, and why removing content rarely stops the learning.
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.
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.
Which Data Tells You Anything
Schools collect a great deal of data and act on very little of it. Which numbers tell a school whether it is getting better, and which are theatre.
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.
Governance Structures That Attract Education Investors
If the management team is not trusted to manage, the answer is to replace them and not to govern around them. What a board is actually for, and where its oversight should stop.
Appointing a Head of School: The Decision That Makes or Breaks It
The appointment that shapes everything else in a school. Where owners go wrong when they choose a head, and what a sound selection process looks like.
What is an Education Management Organisation?
When an operator relationship breaks down the cause is rarely competence on either side. It is that nobody settled who does what, by capacity rather than by title, and wrote it into the contract.
A School That Cannot Pay for Itself Cannot Serve Its Students
Financial strength is what allows a school to make decisions on educational grounds. Build a ten-year model, and stress test the early years that decide everything after them.
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