This is a speech at the first all-staff meeting of ECNUAS for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Improve management for higher education quality,
Deepen innovation for distinct education features
August 23, 2021
It is my honor to sever ECNUAS as its Executive Principal. This year will be my third year with ECNUAS. In the past two years, when I was new to the school, I was helped by Principal Gong, Assistant Principal Vincent, the Principals of primary school, middle school, high school, and kindergarten. I was also supported by academic leaders and teachers in all the schools. I was feeling that I just started my journey in ECNUAS by putting some of my understandings about national, bilingual and international education, my learning about curriculum development, and my knowledge of teacher development strategies into practice in the schools. There are still many things to be planned and to be implemented in the years to come. I feel that I am still unfamiliar with many parts of the school and even unfamiliar with many people in it, and there are still so many things I need to learn from my colleagues in the school. More relationships need to be built, more connections in our curricular components need to be made, more collaboration opportunities need to be created. Education is infinitely complicated; therefore, it requires collaboration of many contributors in the school. It takes a village to raise a child. As the Executive Principal, I will continue to cultivate the culture of collaboration across all the schools, will continue to make connections between different educational forces and resources in the school, will continue to support diverse students’ learning, and will support teachers’continous learning and development.
This coming 2021 academic year will be the second year into the Second 5-year Development Outline of ECNUAS. Last year, the focus of our school work was quality education outcomes. Leaders and teachers, schools and departments began to discuss and sometimes debate what quality education means in and for ECNUAS. Expectations for teaching practices and students’ learning were examined against the intention of producing higher quality learning outcomes. Good practices were identified and promoted through a variety of channels such as subject groups, SGL conferences, whole-school teaching competition, in order for improved teaching and learning across the school; exemplar teachers were recognized and praised in different ways and at different levels such as the school level, the education group level, as well as recognitions and awards from the government.
Some issues in relation to quality of teaching and learning also began to emerge as a result of these discussions and examinations. Divisional principals, academic leaders, and teachers began to see some gaps between our practices, standards, expectations and our goal of high quality education. In order to tackle these issues and gaps, some correct questions were asked by the school administration, divisional leaders, and classroom teachers, for example, in our kindergarten we ask Why do we teach English in this way rather than the other way? In primary school, we ask Should we have high expectations for our primary school learners’ academic achievement? In the middle school, Is the teaching in certain subjects more effective than other subjects? In the high school, What are the key factors that really made student improvement in some subject areas stagnate? At the large school level, Do our teachers reflect on their practices, learn new teaching strategies, study learning science, and very importantly work hard in order to make improvement in classrooms? Does our school allocate curricular resources and assign teachers appropriately in a way that will produce outstanding educational outcomes? Do the academic leaders in the school provide needed guidance and support as to teacher learning and teacher change in the purpose of better students’ achievement?
The pressure of improving the education quality in ECNUAS not only arose internally but also came from the government, the parents, and the society. As a distinguished private school in Jiading district and in Shanghai, these external stakeholders all hold high expectations for our education. These stakeholders want to see the school develop well-rounded learners, perform well in high school entrance examination, and successfully send graduates to distinguished world universities. With a series of new educational and curricular policies being promulgated by the Chinese central government and local government recently, we gathered that these informal expectations from outside the school now become official requirements and perhaps demands. As the Chinese society becomes richer and the public sector in China become stronger, it came to a conclusion that the government only want to keep a certain proportion of high quality private schools in the K-9 education system. Private schools are now required to provide alternative, high quality education with unique features as opposed to what public school education can offer to the Chinese society.
On the backdrop of ECNUAS’ internal developmental needs and external demand, I decided the subject of today’s speech to be Improve management for improved education quality, Deepen innovation for distinct education features. My subject is also in line with the theme of our Principal Gong’s speech. She proposed that for the 2021 academic year ECNUAS should adapt to policy changes in order to “improve education quality for better endurance and deepen education richness for better branding”. To this end, she suggested three focuses of work for this year, including teacher professional development, diverse student growth, innovations in teaching and learning. Both Principal Gong’s speech and my work plan are linked and aligned with the the Second 5-year Development Outline of ECNUAS.
The second 5-year development outline delineates two main development goals by the end of 2025.
Development Goal 1
As a modern educational organization, we will improve its organizational structure, complete its rules and regulations, and upgrade its governing systems.
Development Goal 2
Build and upgrade the school administration that supports teaching and learning characterized by quality, integration, diversity, and love.
Two sub-goals in development goal 1 are closely related to my job profile as the executive prinicipal.
Sub-Goal 1(2) Establish a learner centered system of teaching and learning that features east-west integrated education and bilingual education.
Sub-Goal 1 (3): Create a human resource action plan that is driven by teacher and leadership development.
Four sub-goals of development goal 2 are related to my job profile.
Development Goal 2
Build and upgrade the school administration that supports teaching and learning characterized by quality, integration, diversification, and love.
Sub-Goal 2(1): Strengthen the full implementation of the nine-year compulsory national curriculum, expand the bilingual integrated curriculum from Grade one to Grade nine, and refine the international programs in the kindergarten and the high school
Sub-Goal 2 (2) : Adopt internationally recognized curriculum and assessment modules, diversify international education products, and build a 16-year East-West integrated curriculum continuum that demonstrates ECNUAS attributes.
Sub-Goal 2(3): Informed by theories of bilingual integrated education and best practices of student assessment, develop a rigorous and systematic quality control system for teaching and learning
Sub-Goal 2(4): Proactively explore international exchanges and collaborations, encourage teachers and students to participate in academic conferences and competitions internationally, boost the image and reputation of the school internationally, upgrade the school’s capacity of providing international education services.
I think it is important to align our planning and work with the 2nd five year development outline; it is also important for us to digest and understand Principal Gong’s work outline and expectations. As a large organization, we have our vision and mission that will guide us toward our shared long term goals. The 5 year development outline and the Principal’s annual work outline set up short directions for every one of the school so that we can calibrate our energy and forces together for the accomplishment of a few focused key targets for the year.
In the next a few minutes, I will talk about three main areas that I am going to concentrate on in the following year.
1st
Discuss and collaborate with the academic leadership team in each school to develop an education quality framework for each school. This framework should align with the 10 Standards of Education Quality, which Principal Gong just reiterated in her speech. It should take into account each school’s curricular characteristics, students’ characteristics, traditions and policies, and strengths and weaknesses of the teachers. This framework should outline how the team in the school define the education quality, how the school will monitor the process of curriculum planning, teaching, learning, and assessment, and how the school uses data to reflect, adjust and improve. This framework should also embody the whole person education philosophy, that is to say academic outcomes should not be the only parameter of student achievement.
I will pay particular attention to the quality of graduating classes in each school. Historical data of the school, district level data, and/or global data will all inform the evaluation of the performances of our students as well as teachers. I will also pay special attention to the learning outcomes in English and Chinese subjects as the two languages are marked in the bilingual name of our school. I am going to discuss with academic leadership teams in the schools to determine more specific targets of student achievements for this year. Elodie and the Curriculum and Teaching Department will support me in this area of work by monitoring the assessment and evaluation processes and by bringing me the data analysis.
2nd
I will put more effort in supporting teacher learning and development. Rain will be assistant principal in this area. Collaborating with her and other leaders in schools, we will review the system of teacher development in ECNUAS. The ECNUAS professional standards need to be reviewed; standards of teacher practices should be created; annual teacher appraisal processes may be improved; a planning and evaluating tool for teacher and leadership development should be created; strategies and pathways of teacher development and a supporting system associated with them should be considered—while we will continue to support curriculum associated PDs such as IB, IPC, IMYC, national curriculum, AWIM STEM, English teaching workshops, we will also consider trainings of more general pedagogy like Cambridge PDQ and others; an accountability strategy including student or parent feedback channels will also be considered. The school will continue supporting planned and purposeful teacher learning and development because we understand that effective teacher development will build a more capable, more responsible, and more dedicated teaching power for students.
3rd
Carol will be acting as the assistant principal in the area of pastoral care curriculum and programs, while Richard will oversee the further development and implementation of international programs in the large school. In collaboration with Carol and Richard, I will put more thoughts and take more actions on curriculum development in the purpose of providing richer and more diversified learning opportunities and curricular pathways for learners in ECNUAS. ECNUAS already established several major curricular pathways for students including differentiated Class of Rose and Class of Beech, local school preparation and international education preparation, A-Level program and IBDP. We should continue to consider and build more programs in order to create more diversified learning opportunities for learners at different ages and with different interests and talents. We will continue to support the development of stronger Arts, PE, and Music programs; The Student Career Planning Curriculum and the K-12 STEAM programs will join the Chinese Traditional Culture curriculum to become our signature educational establishments. The four Houses will continue playing important roles in students’ whole-person development; in addition, a range of sports teams will be created to attract students with special athletic interests and talents.
On the top of these school level curriculum developments and innovations, the leadership team of each school will be asked to reflect on existing curriculum components in the school and hence lead and encourage innovations for the purpose of more differentiated teaching and learning in the division. As a growing private school under the new policy environment in China, ECNUAS has to create a systematic and multi-layered strategy of differentiation. Differentiation can be designed and implemented at the school curriculum level, it also should be planned and applied in classrooms as an integral part of pedagogy. This requires academic leaders of each school to be more innovative, this also requires our teachers to be more active in learning and applying what we learned about differentiation strategies in classroom practice.
In sum, in this new academic year, I will strive to test more possibilities and test more strategies of collaborating with the Principal, the Vice Principal, the Heads of schools, supporting Departments, and teachers in a hope to accomplish the goals as outlined above. As you can see, in this year we bring more talented people into the management team, we try to make sure the important areas at the school level will be looked after properly by the leadership team; we also try to ensure the leadership profile in each division to be complete so that teacher management, guidance, evaluation and student learning, support, and assessment will be fully followed up and through. These new changes should project more ideas, more innovations, and more energy into the system of education in ECNUAS. I believe we will see more collaboration, more communication, and more learning and change. When all these vertical and horizontal collaborations take effects, we will see a better ECNUAS even though we are facing increasing internal needs for change and intensive external pressure for improvement.
Inspired by our school motto, We learn for better self, and we think for better life.
Wish you all the best in this coming year!
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