Message From The Principal, 6 Sep 2019

Research shows that teacher effectiveness is closely associated to student achievement.

At Island School we are committed to ensuring that every lesson features high quality teaching and we have created numerous initiatives to achieve this goal:

• Recruiting excellent teachers from all over the world
• Implemented standards of practice for teaching
• Adopted planning processes that ensure that each course is of high quality and assures consistency amongst classes
• Offer extensive professional development to ensure that every teacher is highly qualified to run the courses they teach.
• Use professional development planning to articulate their learning priorities for each teaching staff and appointed mentors to guide development.
• School leaders, including myself, spend time in classrooms each week to assure the quality of the programmes

This year we have also appointed a new vice principal, Gayle Marshall, who is responsible for overseeing teaching quality and for ensuring there is alignment in the teaching and learning across our campuses.

Gayle will work with a committee of teachers to progress this work and will keep the school council appraised of progress.

In summary my colleagues and I accept the premise that better teaching leads to better results for students. We welcome opportunities to improve our practice and are looking forward to the continued focus on enhancing the quality of teaching at Island School.