COGNITA seeks a dynamic Head of School to develop St Andrews International School in Bangkok

St Andrews International School
Sukhumvit 107
Bangkok, Thailand

Seeks a Head of School

July/August 2011

COGNITA seeks a dynamic Head of School to develop St Andrews International School at Sukhumvit 107, Bangkok. Employment will begin in July/August, 2011.

The new Head will be the key figure in leading a major school development and marketing drive over the next several years as the school introduces its secondary programme, enlarges its facilities, and significantly increases its enrolment.

THE OPPORTUNITIES:

The new Head will have four special opportunities:

1. Standards: Lead a high-quality school for younger pupils to its next level – create a significantly larger school with a British-based secondary programme which achieves high standards through robust benchmarking, evidence analysis, and instructional actions to promote student learning.

2. Marketing: Significantly expand the school’s enrolment, particularly at the secondary level, by leading a major, sustained marketing campaign.

3. Programme: Develop the high quality full-school curriculum, services, staff, and facilities needed to meet the school’s high standards -- and to generate and accommodate growing enrolment.

4. Community: Achieve the above through enthusiastic team-building based on the school’s current, supportive sense of community and family.

COGNITA:

The Cognita group currently encompasses fifty-two schools across the UK, Europe and South-East Asia. Fitting a broad profile, our family of schools includes nurseries, pre-prep, prep, junior and senior schools. We employ some 3,500 teaching and support staff, in the care and education of over 15,800 pupils The Company's Head Office is in Milton Keynes, UK; its Asia Pacific Office is located in Singapore.

Cognita's vision is to own and manage a family of independent schools, each of which enjoys an excellent reputation within its community. Each school's reputation will grow as a result of consistently meeting the aspirations that parents have for their child's education. Their child will be happy and enthusiastic about the school. The school will be seen to invest in its relationship with individual parents. It will be recognized as keen to nurture a culture that treats parents as customers.

The Cognita family of schools implements three key strategies in all its schools, in order to deliver upon this vision. It will:

1. Develop, protect and preserve the atmosphere, ethos, and culture of each school.
2. Recruit, retain and develop very good teachers in order to provide the very best education.
3. Develop excellent communications between the school and its parents.

Cognita schools thrive by drawing on four unique sources of competitive advantage in developing these strategies. Cognita:

1. Maintains a staff of leading educators, who are very successful and experienced in education, in teaching and in the development of schools.
2. Is run by professional management, structuring and supporting the business aspects of the schools with a range and level of skills that may be difficult for any one school to afford.
3. Has access to funds for the development of people, organization, facilities and systems infrastructure.
4. Enjoys the benefits of scale -- of being a large group. It employs a large cadre of excellent teachers, able to exchange best practice experiences; it is financially robust and it can deliver savings and efficiencies through its support services.

THE SCHOOL:

Since its founding in 2004, the school has operated as one of the St. Andrews International Schools in Bangkok. Fully accredited by the CfBT in the UK, the school has served primarily younger pupils. The school provides the English National Curriculum. The new Head will lead the consolidation of the IGCSE programme and the development of the A-level/AS programmes. The oldest current grade is Year 10 with three pupils. The school will add Years 11 and 12 in 2011-12 and 2012-13 respectively. Of the current 100 pupils, about 50% have both parents of Thai nationality; about 20% have one parent who is Thai and one who is non-Thai; and about 30% have both parents who are non-Thai. Over 20 nationalities are represented amongst the families. The school is best known and appreciated for its warm family atmosphere and standard-based approach to teaching and learning. Class sizes average 12 pupils. Facilities and resources are very good. The school operates on a three hectare campus with a completely purpose-built primary building; a full secondary building has just been completed. The outdoor facilities include a primary play areas, full soccer pitch, 25-meter swimming pool, covered playing court, and changing rooms. Space is available and construction is planned for an Arts Centre and additional classrooms. When completed, the enrolment capacity of the campus will be 700. The school is located is Bangna, an outer district of Bangkok, on the Sukhumvit Road SkyTrain line; a new SkyTrain station will open directly in front of the school in August, 2012.

HEAD’S RESPONSIBILTIES:

To turn the above four opportunities into realities, the Head will:

1. Effectively and efficiently manage the delivery of the educational program at the school.
2. Provide on a day to day basis professional leadership, supervision and evaluation of the school’s programs and staff.
3. Assist COGNITA in the preparation, implementation, and monitoring of a Strategic Plan for the school’s development.
4. Promote and market the school locally, regionally and internationally.
5. Ensure responsible management of the school.
6. Monitor the financial management of the school.
7. Assist and advise COGNITA on the development of Academic Policy.
8. Recruit, appoint, evaluate academic personnel within the policies of COGNITA
9. Effectively and efficiently facilitate communication and collaboration among staff, students and parents, and ensure that all school groups are provided with accurate and full information on all matters of concern to them.
10. Ensure that standards maintained at the school meet the expectations of the school community.

ACCOUNTABLITY:
The Head will report to the COGNITA Chief Education Officer for Asia Pacific.

QUALIFICATIONS:

The successful applicant is expected to have the following abilities, qualities, knowledge and experience.

Personal abilities and qualities:

• Outstanding communication, networking, and marketing abilities.
• Ability to establish effective team leadership and working relationships with staff, students, parents and community members.
• A firm commitment to high quality service delivery in an educational environment
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate effectively both orally and in written form to a wide range of audiences.
• A clear predisposition and personality for nurturing a family-based school atmosphere, especially as a school matures and develops.
• Ability to develop a clear vision for the development of the school reflecting its current strengths and upcoming challenges – motivating and inspiring both students and staff, together with the skills and resourcefulness to implement such a vision.

Knowledge:

• A strong understanding and experience of UK curriculum and current theories and practice of pedagogy and assessment, including the secondary level.
• An excellent understanding school development processes, with an emphasis on meeting and exceeding the school’s educational goals, including the use of benchmarking and data to achieve goals.
• A well-developed understanding of the strategies needed to market a school in a competitive environment.
• A solid foundation in school business practices, with an emphasis on developing and implementing budgets that meet and exceed the school’s financial goals.
• A strong understanding and knowledge of contemporary leadership practices in a complex school environment full of varying cultural expectation.

Experience:

• An advanced degree in education.
• Successful experience in a leadership position (such as head, deputy head, and/or divisional principal) at a school with UK-based curriculum for at least three years.
• Experience in secondary level education.
• Demonstrated experience of effectively working with a diverse group of students, parents, and staff with different cultural backgrounds and expectations.
• Proven planning and organizational ability leading to attainment of previous schools’ educational and financial goals.
• Experience in growing schools and developing new school facilities
• Experience of effective supervision and appraisal of staff, including senior administrative staff.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
An initial three year contract is offered. The salary, benefits and terms of contract will be commensurate with the qualifications and experience sought in the candidate. The candidate should be available to commence work at the beginning of the academic year 2011-2012.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE:

Cognita has engaged Search Associates to assist in this Head search. The lead consultant will be John Ritter, Senior Associate at Search, who will be assisted by his wife, Susan Ritter. All materials submitted by applicants will be regarded as confidential by Search Associates and the Cognita selection committee.

Please submit information in the form and manner requested below. Please do not send any information other than that which is specifically requested at the present time.

Please send all of the following as a single document in Word or pdf format:

• A letter of application, no longer than two pages, explaining your strengths and interests regarding this particular position.
• A one-page statement outlining educational beliefs and leadership style.
• The names, current email addresses and telephone numbers, and positions of at least four confidential referees, all of whom should have served as your supervisor. By submitting this information you agree that we may contact these referees directly.

Please send this single document to ,b>both John Ritter and Susan Ritter at both of these email addresses: rittervis@hotmail.com and search.susan@gmail.com.

Please submit your application by 14 February 2011 at the very latest. However, active consideration of candidates will be begin as soon as applications are received, and Cognita reserves the prerogative to appoint a candidate before this date. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that candidates submit an application as early as possible.

CONSULTANT’S COMMENTS:

I have personally visited this school’s campus and talked at length with Cognita’s Chief Education Officer for South East Asia and Cognita’s Director of Marketing for Thailand.

This position is an excellent and exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic, motivating, hard-working Head to develop a high-quality, full international school.

This is also a somewhat unusual opportunity to truly focus on developing quality and marketing that quality. Experienced Heads understand that, in developing a school, sometimes huge amounts of time, funds, and effort must first be spent on securing “quality neutral” infrastructure that does not necessarily or directly create quality: legal status, governance issues, land, construction, loans, etc. These tasks drain the Head’s time and talent away from directly forming and leading professional and community teams to improve programs of teaching and learning.

This opportunity is different. The school’s current standards, staff, grounds, and facilities provide a solid “take-off” platform which will allow the new Head to focus immediately on further developing programme quality, especially at the secondary level, and on communicating and marketing this to the wider community that seeks such quality. If you would like such an opportunity, we will look forward to hearing from you!

- John Ritter, Search Associates