SIS Strategic Development Plan 2019-2020

Dear Students, Parents and Staff,

This is an extremely exciting moment at South Island School, and an equally exciting moment for me as Principal, as I approach the end of my first year as the leader of this wonderful school.

Since my arrival, I have been blessed with so many students, staff, parents and members of the community telling me their thoughts about what we do well, and what we could do even better – whether through surveys, as a member of an official leadership group or development forum, or simply because they are seeking to Make A Difference.

During the course of this consultation process, we have articulated that, historically at SIS, our Mission has been to maximise Well-Being, Learning, and Global Citizenship. We have now added Sustainability as a fourth Mission Area to reflect the very strong feeling amongst our students in particular that we must make this a major priority going forward. We are in the process of finalising our definitions of each of these areas, and we will be launching a student competition in August on how best to graphically present our mission to the community.

To help us achieve our overarching mission, we have also been looking very closely at the finer details of school life. We have now reached the stage where we have identified our long-term goals, as well as our development priorities going forward, and have articulated these into this central document:

As well as working with the school community, we have also been working very closely with senior colleagues across ESF. As you know from the CEO’s recent announcement, ESF are placing strong value on alignment, agility and accountability going forward.

The creation of the SIS plan has been a genuinely collaborative and collegiate exercise – so we are sure that its contents will be well aligned with the views of our stakeholders, who are now also accountable for helping us to make it all happen! We are also ready to adjust our priorities with agility where necessary: we will be checkpointing our progress against the details of the plan at very regular intervals, and will be officially renewing the plan every year.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has helped us to articulate our future vision for South Island School. We are blessed with a community who truly care. As we enter our next development phase, this gives me great confidence that SIS is ready to move from being one of the best schools in Hong Kong to being truly one of the best schools in the world.

With best wishes,

Tom Vignoles
Principal