International SOS is our global partner in providing risk mitigation services to schools, including affordable medical, safety and security planning; preventative programmes; in-country expertise and emergency response for more than 9,000 clients worldwide. They support hundreds of educational institutions globally to achieve their unique security, health and safety goals.

ECIS Index provides data and information to aid schools in benchmarking and decision-making, whereby schools can run their own reports. This digital tool helps schools with aspects of school operations, including human resources, budget allocation, admission, advancement, economic sentiment, and more. Data collection window is October 1 to November 30.

Our board management software offer, Board Director, helps the board and senior management team to simplify the process of preparing for board meetings and strengthening institutional memory. We replace clunky and non-secure email with software beautifully designed for scheduling board meetings, sharing sensitive documents securely, creating an audit trail, and reducing time and costs.

Brief, knowledge-rich courses on holding management accountable; the relationship between the board and the head of school; the board’s role in strategy-making; and current parent board members.

The Advanced Governing Webinars move the conversation about governance beyond basic training for new governors/trustees.  We focus on four areas that are critical to success, but and also have the potential to create significant problems when done poorly.  Each is a stand-alone webinar but we suggest that you view all four as a complete package.  The goal is to offer information which will lead to thoughtful conversations in your board room and inform good governance practice in a new way.

The Board’s Relationship with the Head of School:

In this webinar we focus on the essential nature of this vital partnership.  When board and head work well together the community benefits and the success of the school is central to the work in the board room.  When there are issues in this relationship, it has the potential to disrupt strategic work and affect the immediate success of the school.  Building, strengthening and, when necessary, repairing this relationship is the focal point of this segment.

Wearing the Parent Hat as a Board Member:

This webinar focuses on one of the most difficult aspects of being on a board when your child/ren are in the school you are serving.  We focus on the challenges, the role of each governor/trustee, and the relationship of the board member to the constituent community of which he or she is also a part. We trouble-shoot the thorny issues and offer guidance on how to navigate multiple perspectives in order to serve the mission and long-term sustainability of the school.

The Board’s Role in Strategy-Making:

One of the responsibilities of every board is to think strategically and plan for the future of the school. We recognize the changing nature of boards in many international schools – governors who come and go frequently – and the perpetual challenge of trying to see the future when things seem so unpredictable.  Nevertheless, strategic thinking is critical and without it any school will be adrift. In this webinar we hone in on this critical function of trusteeship and guide boards and heads in how to have a strategic dialogue.

Holding Management Accountable:

In our governance work around the world, we often hear the question of how do boards know it (the school) is working?  How can we discharge our fiduciary responsibility if we have no way to know what success means in this school context?  In this webinar we focus on what governors need to know, how to get that information and yet maintain appropriate boundaries, and how to support the head while being sure that mission is being served.  This webinar underpins all the others in that having confidence that things are truly working allows each trustee to respond appropriately to parent concerns, support the board’s relationship with the head of school, and informs the context to plan strategically.

April 2020: How are we paying attention to our complex learning ecosystems that we call ‘schools?’ For example, how does your ecosystem exhibit a true sense of community through respectful, healthy, and ethical relationships and interactions? How best might we state and live our values in this age of anxiety, in ways that result in healthy learning ecosystems? From learning spaces to school timetables to the availability of online courses to enhance our offerings, complemented by our careful and overt attention to well-being (and more!), what we value should end up defining our ecosystems. But does that always happen?