We offer a full range of school based consultative services including functional and structural audits, capacity building and specialist workshopping. Our particular specialisms are listed below but talk to us about our ability to customise leadership support services according to your needs. We are experienced with a number of school evaluation models and able to offer in-depth support in both faculty and operational domain
Strategy and Strategic Planning
We are highly experienced in the area of school strategic planning, favouring aspirational strategic planning as an approach in line with the principles of goal setting that derive from coaching. Ask us to review your current strategic planning process and its impact and then work with us to develop higher leverage strategic planning that aligns with your school vision and values.
Curriculum Strategy
Is your current curriculum still ‘fit for purpose?’ Does it still reflect the changing needs of the workplace, the rapidly evolving face of Higher Education and the significant disruptions experienced across the globe since 2019. ‘Programme based’ education has been in place since the middle of the 20th Century – almost inevitably, it will not look the same by the middle of the 21st Century. Is your school evaluating the currency of the learning provided by your curriculum? Does your curriculum reflect what you stand for? Ask us to help you stimulate that discussion in your school.
Futures Thinking
Schools are busy places. Inevitably, much of what leaders do can be reactive and operational. But if all of the leaders are getting their hands dirty in the engine room, who is looking at where the school is going? This is an age of disruption where the future of your school is inevitably enmeshed with the future of education: who is looking at what this means for your school, in your context?
We use materials developed by the OECD to help you set the right long term goals to shape your medium term strategy, business planning and staffing model. Schools that have not anticipated the extent of the coming disruption to our industry run the risk of being swallowed by it.
Coaching
‘Coaching’ has become something of an industry in itself but what we at Solutions@ mean by coaching is using the simple structure of the GROW model to develop individuals, create organisational culture, guide strategic planning, underpin performance management systems and establish succession planning. We can support your leaders with Executive Coaching; run one, two or three day workshops for leaders, middle leaders or team members; run workshops to develop coaching approaches to strategy, people management, managing meetings and conflict resolution (see workshops below).
Recruitment
We have extensive experience of recruitment to all organisational levels. Getting the right people into the right places is the most important achievement for any school; it’s often time consuming to get right but very expensive to get wrong. Ask us to manage recruitment fields for you, design job profiles for vacancies through your usual channels, or review these channels and advise on better placement and communication strategies. Solutions@ can help with approaches to diverse recruitment, with long listing, shortlisting or final interviews.
Ask us to review induction and onboarding practices and to support senior appointments with one or two year induction support coaching and mentoring. Invest in your new leaders.
Workshops
- Coaching skills
- Conflict resolution/ Difficult conversations
- Intercultural communication
- Leadership
- Change management
- Organisational culture
- Appreciative inquiry
- Board/ Governing Body training
- Induction and succession planning
Professional Learning
In addition to the services described above, we believe in learning as the cornerstone of individual and organisational development. Leaders who are learners set the tone of the whole organisation. Ask us to help your professional development team by looking at how they create their professional learning strategy, how it connects to strategic planning and individual goal setting and how impact is assessed.
Marketing and Communication
Perception can become reality with the chatter that circulates on social media around international schools. It is hard to gain a good reputation but much easier to lose it. Telling strong stories that attract the right parents, the right students, the right teachers and the right members of your local community is mission critical. Equally critical is finding ways to keep all of your stakeholders engaged and informed at the appropriate level, building a sense of trust which removes the need to over-communicate and justify each school decision. Ask us to review the stories you tell about your school, the language you use and the channels that you use to communicate. Are you who you say you are? Is your reality actually better than your current story? Are you an accidentally kept secret?
Copywriting Services
Where English is not the first language of organisational leaders, written communication, especially in key places such as websites, admissions materials and job advertisements can be challenging to get right. Sometimes it is hard to convey the real meaning that you are trying to get across to international applicants. Ask us to undertake a language review of your publicly available material and to use our linguistic and leadership experience to tell the right stories about your organisation, using the right words.