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Principal

Principal

New Cairo British International School

Egypt

  • Expired
Job type:
Full Time, Fixed Term
Start date:
August 2018
Apply by:
11 November 2017

Job overview

NCBIS, a not for profit NGO, is a leading British International School in Cairo and was the first in Cairo to gain full accreditation from the Council of International Schools (CIS). NCBIS is an IB World School, an Executive Member of COBIS and a member of BSME. Founded in 1978 by expatriate parents, NCBIS is an all- through 3-18 co-educational school serving a multi-national group of families representing more than 60 nationalities. The school’s mission is to provide a “caring, vibrant and forward- thinking” curriculum in which all children will thrive and become global and democratic citizens in a century marked by change, challenge and opportunity.

Located in an impressive facility in an upscale part of Cairo - mostly an expat community, NCBIS is poised to develop further in the next chapter of its story. The key to its success will be through attaining the highest individual achievement for each pupil in order to open the way to world-class higher education institutions while not forgetting the individual and pastoral needs of all.

Generally small class sizes allow the well trained, professional teachers and teaching assistants to focus on individual student needs. Children experience active, well supported and resourced lessons often driven by their own questions. Classes have regular opportunities for outdoor learning as well as educational visits to locations around Cairo. NCBIS also attach great importance to the thriving extra-curricular programme which engages students in sport, the arts and service activities.

The Primary school students follow the Primary Years Programme (PYP), a course of study that ‘prepares students to be active participants in a lifelong journey of learning’.

The Dutch stream, an integral part of their school history and culture, also bases their curriculum on the PYP but modify it where necessary. In Key Stage 3, the first three years of secondary school, they offer the English National Curriculum leading to the IGCSE / GCSE examinations in Key Stage 4. Their senior students have the opportunity to take the prestigious IB Diploma, an internationally renowned programme of study that opens the doors to the best universities in the UK and around the world

The NCBIS mission is:

To provide a learning environment that supports academic achievement whilst promoting personal growth through the attributes of the IB Learner profile, within a caring international community committed to the traditional values of honesty, courtesy, respect, integrity and fair play.

Vision Statement - in 2021 NCBIS is:

An international school of renown that provides an education of excellence by which students are prepared for a rapidly changing world where skills, values, attitudes and attributes are as important as knowledge. This education enables students to fulfill their academic, sporting and artistic potential and develop a positive and creative mindset that enables them to achieve success at school and in later life. This is achieved in a happy atmosphere and safe and stimulating physical environment that is conducive to academic learning as well as personal and social growth. NCBIS will continue to be celebrated for its warm and caring ethos and its positive contribution to a sustainable and just world.

Values:

NCBIS is guided in all its actions and decisions by its commitment to:

  • Providing quality education in a safe, secure and caring environment.
  • Ensuring choice and challenge both within the curriculum and the extra-curricular programmes.
  • Promoting academic and personal achievement.
  • Inspiring intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and enthusiasm for learning.
  • Developing each student’s unique talents to help them achieve their potential.
  • Maintaining an internationally diverse community of open- minded people.

Job Description

1. Strategic Leadership and Reputation

  • Generating appropriate and dynamic leadership in all areas of the school’s operations
  • Giving educational strategic direction, proposing aims and objectives for the school and policies for their implementation, and providing drive to deliver the changes that are required for success.
  • Understanding and delivering performance management and adherence to the budget to develop the school’s financial strength
  • Communicating The NCBIS ethos with enthusiasm, promoting the school’s image and spearheading the recruitment of pupils
  • Securing at all times the school’s good name and reputation, participating appropriately in the affairs of local educational and business networks
  • Reporting fully and frankly to the Board of Directors, and accepting regular appraisal and reasonable performance management review
  • Maintaining NCBIS at the forefront of regional organisations along with their successful reaccreditations
  • Lead the development/updating and execution of a strategic plan
  • Perform structured yearly analysis to identify areas for improvement both academically and operation

2. Educational provision and quality

  • Maintaining NCBIS in the top tier of British International Schools, both in Egypt and internationally (Ed provision)
  • Ensuring the physical, mental and moral welfare of all pupils and maintaining good discipline
  • Directing and managing the education, both curricular and extra-curricular, provided by the school; ensuring that the highest standards of teaching and learning are delivered and that performance is kept under review
  • Providing a high quality rounded education for all pupils focussed on academic achievement
  • Insisting on the highest quality of teaching and learning, ensuring that these are continually monitored and geared to adding value
  • Leading, encouraging and supporting innovation in teaching and learning
  • Instilling purpose and discipline among pupils constructively and fairly
  • Embedding the IB Learner profile in every aspect of NCBIS School life

3. Management

  • Developing the management structure of the school so that vision and strategy are shared, development is planned, targets are set and results are evaluated
  • Appointing and promoting the best possible teaching staff, in conjunction with legal requirements and Board’s procedures and guidelines; deploying staff, maintaining staff performance and professional development through carefully designed and applied systems of appraisal
  • Arranging proper programmes of staff induction and procedures for Newly Qualified Teachers
  • Maintaining at all times, staff discipline and professional standards; ensuring compliance with all legal requirements and regulations
  • Lead and develop a strong senior leadership team
  • Arranging efficient and welcoming programmes of staff induction
  • Work (pro-)actively with the board to develop and strengthen the school

4. Communication

  • Managing at all times effective and positive communication with pupils, staff, parents, prospective parents, Board of Directors and the wider community
  • Ensuring that the appearance of the school is always welcoming and that pupils’ and parents’ needs and concerns are always given high priority
  • Marketing the school actively to potential parents to maximise pupil numbers
  • Cultivating excellent PR to celebrate the school’s achievements, extend the range of its publicity, develop relationships with other schools and achieve the best possible partnership with the wider community
  • Dealing effectively and positively with any complaints with the overall aims of quality assurance and parental satisfaction
  • Develop a clear communication strategy and ensure timely and consistent communication via multiple channels to the community

These job details are guides to the duties, professional responsibilities and core competences.

Person Specification

The successful candidate will be:

  • A dynamic and inspirational leader who will drive change and develop and grow the school
  • A person who possesses a high quality and proven experience of school leadership gained either in the UK or internationally
  • sensitive to the values that should pervade the NCBIS in a manner that expresses total integrity and probity
  • A team player who can contribute to a dynamic senior leadership team.
  • A decisive manager who can make difficult decisions in the interest of the organisation.
  • A confident and genuine communicator who can instil trust among the faculty and parent body.
  • An educationalist who understands how to recognize and develop quality teaching and learning.
  • An ambassador who can promote and celebrate the British School in the expatriate community of Cairo.
  • A global citizen who truly understands the benefit and importance of international education.
  • A leader with a sense of humility that allows them to always put the interests of the school before their personal gain.

Role and responsibility

The person appointed must be a self-starter capable of leading NCBIS confidently and positively. The Principal will be capable of acting with initiative and imagination.

Good relationships with pupils, parents and staff will be crucial and therefore it will be necessary to identify those candidates with strong listening skills as well as the capacity to communicate and motivate. It is important that the new Principal will give a reasonable time commitment to the School seeing at least a whole generation of pupils pass through the junior school. This post must not be seen as a “stepping stone.”

The Principal will be expected to have a keen knowledge and interest in contemporary educational matters and also be a highly efficient administrator. Of critical value will be the abilities to communicate, convey enthusiasm and energy, and succeed in the successful marketing of the school to new parents and pupils. Transcending all these qualities will be the importance of integrity, good judgement and the ability to understand and identify with the special environment of NCBIS.

APPLYING FOR THIS POST

Key dates:

Closing date Friday 10th November.
Short list interviews in Cairo - 7th & 8th December.

If you would like to have an informal discussion about this post or the school, please contact Liz Gibbs on liz@lsceducation.com

If you are keen to apply for the post:

  • Visit the LSC Education website at www.lsceducation.com
  • Click in the Vacancies section.
  • Click into the posting relevant to this job.
  • At the bottom of the page click on ‘Apply Now’
  • Complete the brief Job Application Form and attach your CV (with contact details of Referees) and Letter of Application
  • Click on ‘Submit’.
  • We will be in contact with you shortly after your application has been reviewed.
  • If you encounter any problems with this process, please contact liz@lsceducation.com

The New Cairo British International School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. The successful candidate will be required to undergo relevant background checks.

References

Please include within your application (in your CV) the names, job titles, work email addresses and telephone numbers of a minimum of three professional referees. These need to include your current and all past employers/line managers that you have worked for within at least the past 6 years.

We will need to collect full references before shortlist interviews but if you have a specific preference that we do not contact one or more of your referees, please notify us of this. Please rest assured that no referees will be contacted until LSC Education has received your specific consent to do so.

Qualifications, Identification, Health and Background Checks

Please note that you may be required to bring documentation to interview providing proof of your identity and qualifications as part of LSC Education’s safeguarding procedures. You may also be required, if an offer is to be made, to undergo a pre-placement medical assessment and relevant background checks as part of the organisation’s recruitment and safeguarding procedures.

Safer Recruitment Practice

LSC Education is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We ask all our candidates and clients to share this commitment. Further details of our recommended safe recruitment practices can be found at www.lsceducation.com

LSC Education

LSC Education supports schools and education organisations, globally, to attract and recruit outstanding leaders.

Our search and selection service includes complete creation and management of the recruitment process and we aim to provide an excellent service to our clients and candidates.

For further information about LSC Education, please visit our website at www.lsceducation.com

LSC Education: recruiting outstanding leaders in education Call us: +44 (0)12 5686 2840

Attached documents

About New Cairo British International School

At NCBIS we offer a caring and high quality education in a secure environment on our unique campus for the international community of Cairo. We have high personal and academic expectations for our students and are proud of the varied and challenging learning opportunities that are provided to our pupils.

Our educational approaches arise out of the best of government and independent education systems, as well as the best practice in international education. We prepare our international students for UK GCSE and AS/A level examinations and the IBDP at age 16 and 18 respectively. We also use the UK Standard Assessment Tasks (CEM) in years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12, and the GL suite throughout the Primary ages. Students in our Dutch Stream are offered a primary education closely aligned to the Dutch National Curriculum, which prepares them for the "Cito-Test" at 12. As a result, all of our students are provided with an education that prepares them to enter a schooling system anywhere, as well as universities in Egypt and elsewhere throughout the world.

As a school, from the Board of Directors down to our administration staff, we are committed to our vision for NCBIS - a vision focused specifically on improving the quality of learning and the levels of student achievement. This vision in turn informs and guides our decision making, both at the strategic and day-to-day level.

NCBIS has a Board of Directors made up entirely of the parental body and ensures a close connection to the school community.

The Board of Directors oversees the strategic direction and financial viability of the school, while taking a support role for the Senior Management Group.

Curriculum Information

In the Primary School we follow a bespoke curriculum which is based on the National Curriculum for England. We are recognised by the International Baccalaureate as an IB World School and use methodologies including project-based and inquiry-based learning to support our young learners. We have six topics every year which cover the curriculum in exciting contexts, and a themes framework that runs vertically through Primary to develop STEM and Global Citizenship characteristics and skills. Each topic, teachers plan together looking at the skills and outcomes required to be taught by the curriculum and what experiences can be included.

Early Years

The Early Years department provides a stimulating and high quality education, in a safe and caring environment, for children aged between 3 and 5 years. We aim to give children the very best possible start to their education and provide a firm foundation on which their future education can be built.

The Early Years curriculum is based on the UK Foundation Stage and is delivered through the inquiry topics each term, supported by the rigorous teaching of phonics.  Structured, well-planned play is an important feature of the curriculum and play-based learning is essential to our vision of developing learners with a positive and creative mindset that enables them to achieve success at school and in later life; achieved through a happy atmosphere and safe and stimulating physical environment that is conducive to academic learning as well as personal and social growth.

The curriculum encourages the individual development of each child through a mixture of whole class, group and individual teaching and is lively, exciting and challenging!

The Early Years department is housed in its own building with a secure outdoor learning environment that is accessed by all the classrooms directly. The outdoor learning environment includes a purpose built splash pool, a large sandpit (a great favourite of our younger learners!), a cushioned tiled area for developing gross motor skills and an artificially grassed area that houses learning centres such as construction, a reading corner, water play, phonics and number skills. The area is covered by purpose built shades, allowing access all year round.

Lower Phase

The Lower Phase encompasses Year 1, 2 and 3 children. We believe learning is achieved through a happy atmosphere and safe and stimulating physical environment that is conducive to academic learning as well as personal and social growth. As such we take great pride in ensuring that our classrooms reflect the learning process and inspire intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and enthusiasm for learning.

Purposeful learning (through projects and inquiries) is central to our pupil’s development and our vision that we need to prepare our pupils for a rapidly changing world where skills, values, attitudes and attributes are as important as knowledge. In inquiring into the world around them pupils are able to gain a deeper understanding of new concepts and to explore those concepts in real life situations.

The outcomes of the UK National Curriculum for England are therefore taught through a combination of discrete skill based lessons and application through our inquiry approach to learning. The firm foundations provided by our Early Years department are built upon in the Lower Phase, with the continuance of the Letters and Sounds Phonics programme. This provides the foundations for early reading and supports our writing programme.

Pupils in the Lower Phase are also supported by our team of specialist subject teachers; with specialist lessons provided in music, physical education and modern foreign languages. In addition to their academic studies, children are also encouraged to participate in our after school Extra Curricular Activities (ECAs) programme, where a range of sporting, artistic and musical activities are offered to enrich the children’s learning experiences and to develop each pupil’s unique talents to help them achieve their potential.

Upper Phase

The three years (Years 4-6) that form our Upper Phase continue to build upon and develop the skills, values, attitudes, attributes, knowledge and conceptual understanding that our students have gained in the Lower Phase.

Every class is led in their learning by a teacher and a teaching assistant, and it is through a wide range of challenges and experiences that our pupils develop lively, questioning and informed minds. Our units of inquiry continue to deepen pupil’s understanding of the world around them and this is again underpinned by the UK National Curriculum outcomes. Local educational visits and residential events in-country and overseas add breadth and interest to our programme of study, bringing to life the pupils’ learning and developing both their academic learning as well as their personal and social growth.

Choice and challenge, both within the curriculum and the extra-curricular programmes, is offered through our specialist lessons in music, physical education and modern foreign languages and involvement in school productions, sports competitions, musical events and our after school activity programme.

High academic and social standards are our expectation and as our pupils transition to Secondary School at the end of Year 6, we are confident that they leave us as caring international pupils committed to the traditional values of honesty, courtesy, respect, integrity and fair play.

The Dutch Stream

The NCBIS Dutch Stream is the only Dutch Primary School in Cairo.  It is one of the three sections of NCBIS  and it is based in the Primary building. The Dutch Stream teaches the Dutch curriculum. Our students also attend subjects like Topic lessons (Science, History, Geography, Art and Design Technology), PE, music and IT in English, together with their peers in the British section. We are recognised by the foundation ‘Stichting Nederlands Onderwijs in het Buitenland (Dutch Education Abroad) and inspected by the Dutch Ministry of Education.  Thanks to the unique cooperation with our British colleagues, we are able to prepare our students for a fluent transition to International or Dutch education. We are a small sized school, which enables us to adapt our teaching to the needs of the individual student.

Moreover, our Dutch speaking students in Secondary School can keep up their Dutch language skills in courses we teach after school hours in the Dutch Stream.

The Secondary Curriculum

The secondary curriculum aims to provide a framework for learners to meet the challenges of life in our fast-changing world. The aim is to provide a curriculum that builds on students’ experiences in the primary phase and that helps all students to become successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens.

The New Cairo British International School’s curriculum aims to promote learners’ intellectual, personal, social and physical development. As well as lessons and extracurricular activities, it includes approaches to teaching, learning and assessment, the quality of relationships within school, and the values embodied in the way the school operates. Our curriculum is based on the English National Curriculum in Key Stage 3 with modifications made to cater for the needs and diversity of the student population at NCBIS. At KS4 we offer IGCSE / GCSE and then the UK A Levels or IB Diploma in the Sixth form.

Key Stage 3: Year 7 to 9 (Age 11 to 14)

Key Stage 3 follows the English National Curriculum and all students will be expected to study the following subjects: Art, Drama, English, Geography, History, Computing, Mathematics, MFL (French, Arabic or Spanish), Music, Physical Education and Science.

At the end of Key Stage 3 (Year 9) students make their options for study at IGCSE / GCSE. At this point students reduce the number of subjects they wish to study.

Key Stage 4: Year 10 to 11 (Age 14 to 16)

The curriculum at Key Stage 4 leads to a two-year course of study leading to external International / General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE / GCSE) examinations. These courses are assessed and graded by coursework and external examination, set by Pearson Examinations (EDEXCEL) Board and Cambridge International Exam Board.

All students study the following compulsory courses: English language, English literature, at least two Science subjects, Mathematics, PE, and Life skills. It must be noted that PE and Life Skills do not lead to a formal qualification

In addition to the above, students make 6 option choices from the following subjects: Arabic (1st language speakers), Art, Biology, Business Studies, Computer Science, Chemistry, Drama, Geography, History, Mathematics, Arabic (MFL), French, Spanish, Music, Physical Education, Physics and Travel & Tourism. The combination of subjects studied as compulsory and those elected to be studied from the optional list, means that students study 9 subjects that lead to a formal qualification.

Key Stage 5: Year 12 to 13 (Age 16 to 18)

In our sixth form students have the option to choose two different pathways. The school currently offers the UK A Level or IBDP curriculum, in which students choose either pathway and then a set of subjects from the following:

English Literature, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Art/Visual Arts, Business, Economics, Geography, History, Psychology, Sports, Exercise and Health Science and Travel & Tourism. In addition to this all students undertake a CAS programme and either an EPQ (A Levels) or Extended Essay & Theory of Knowledge (IB).

Parents’ Evenings, Life Skills sessions and Careers Guidance help both students and families to make these important subject choices. Individual help can also be sought at the Careers office or with Heads of Key Stage.

Careers information involves face to face meetings as well as the use of interactive software and personality tests.

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Applications closed