Dear Parents,
Our community's voice is an important part of our school's continuous improvement. Your invaluable feedback is instrumental in our pursuit of excellence at ISHCMC. Together, we celebrate our achievements and are committed to providing the best educational experience for our students.
To guide our practice at ISHCMC we use a ‘community voice feedback loop’ that guides the steps that we take in response to our community's voice.
1. Gather Feedback
At ISHCMC, we are delighted that there are multiple forums and ways that you can provide us with your feedback. Some of these include:
Reaching out to any member of our team directly,
Completing our CIS Parent Survey or Voice of Parent Survey
Attending our Parent Forums and Workshops
Recently we highlighted the pivotal role your feedback plays as a guiding compass in our relentless journey of improvement.
2. Analysis and Prioritise Feedback
We know that when you provide your feedback this is only one step in the process and it is important for us to be able to share back with you data that is collected, analysis and used to set priorities for action.
Therefore, this week I am thrilled to present a detailed insight into the outcomes of the Council of International Schools (CIS) survey which was conducted in November 2023.
Purpose, Direction, Governance:
An impressive 95% of you understand the school's mission, vision, and values.
94% believe your children are effectively learning to interact with diverse cultures, showing a noteworthy 5% improvement.
Areas for Growth: 14% of express concerns about the school ensuring an appropriate match between their children's needs and the offered program.
Curriculum:
89.5% believe your children are socially and emotionally supported.
89% recognize that the cultural diversity of the school community enriches your children's learning.
Areas for Growth: 20% express concerns about the school not providing sufficient information on their children's growth and achievement and a desire for more continuous feedback on improvement.
Teaching & Assessing:
An impressive 92% report that their children find the lessons interesting, reflecting a 4.5% increase across all grades.
91% believe lessons challenge their children to learn and improve.
Well-being:
An impressive 92.7% understand the school's expectations for their children's behavior.
90.2% believe the school provides good health care when their children are unwell.
Area for Growth: 20% express uncertainty about how to handle harmful or bullying behaviors, an area we are actively addressing.
Staffing:
89% have confidence in teachers' skills and competencies to teach the curriculum, reflecting a significant 7% increase.
84% trust the school's selection and screening of staff and volunteers, showing a notable 7.4% improvement.
Premises, Facilities, Tech Systems, Auxiliary Services:
Most of our community, an impressive 96.1%, believe the school provides a secure environment.
94.1% think the classroom and other teaching spaces are suitable for learning.
91.6% think school premises are clean and well-maintained.
Areas for Growth: 27.6% express dissatisfaction with the quality of food served, and 23.2% disagree with the school's technology systems for parents enhancing their understanding of their child's education.
Community & Home Partnerships:
81.3% believe the school includes them in decisions about their children's education.
80% are involved in the life of the school in ways that benefit their children's learning.
Area for Growth: 18.3% express disagreement with the school effectively managing parent relationships.
3. Provide Feedback on Actions and Impact
In addition, we know that just knowing the data can leave us with questions about what actions are being taken and it is important to share back with you the actions that we have taken in response to your voice.
In light of the CIS Parent Survey results are prioritising areas for growth based on your voice.
Examples of some of these actions are:
Match Between Children's Needs and Programme: We are actively collaborating with our leadership team and student support services team to offer opportunities to share with you how we provide support for students to access the curriculum and how we challenge and enrich learning opportunities through a concept-driven inquiry-based approach to learning.
Behavior and Anti-Bullying Measures: We are actively collaborating with our counselors to enhance your understanding of our behavior and anti-bullying policies. Additionally, there will be increased opportunities over Semester 2 for you to learn about our reporting processes.
Focus Groups & Forums on Academic Growth and Achievement. We will be hosting workshops and opportunities for our parents to better understand academic standards and rigour that drives teaching and learning at ISHCMC. We will also be hosting focused discussions with parents with the aim of comprehensively understanding why 14% of our community feel that they do not have as much information on each child's growth and achievement as they would like. In these sessions we will delve into aspects such as frequency, accessibility and understanding of assessment data.
Parent Relationships: We will design opportunities to understand why 18.3% of our community feel that the school effectively manages parent relationships so that we effect change related to communication and parent-school partnerships.
Global Cafe Collaboration: Building on our ongoing work with Global Cafe, we will continue to invite our parents to more tasting sessions in both primary and secondary. These sessions offer a delightful opportunity for our community to come together, share culinary experiences, and contribute to the enhancement of dining offerings.
We are excited to share more updates on what we have learned from our CIS Parent Survey and our work in progress at our upcoming Head of School Forum on Monday 26 February 2024.
4. Provide Feedback on Actions and Impact
Finally, we know that it is important for us to share with you regular updates on the actions taken and their impact. Therefore, comprehensive overviews of our growth and ongoing initiatives occur at regular intervals through our:
Regular updates via our School Newsletter
CIS & VOP Action Plan - Overview of the Steps Taken Since Last Year
Head of School Parent Forums
Our next Head of School Parent Forum is scheduled for Monday 26 February 2024. I warmly invite you to come and join us to learn more about actions that we have taken, ongoing actions and priorities.
In gratitude,
Kim Green, Head of School
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