School Culture Assessment and Improvement
Your school’s culture is like an iceberg – a bit that is visible and an awful lot going on underneath that has an enormous influence on the success of the mission of your school! The culture of a school determines how well your school helps your students to develop into successful people who will live […]
Performance Management for Christian School Staff
A headache or a legal nightmare? Under-performing staff can provide quite a headache! The ongoing under-performance of staff members damages the educational competence of your school and the confidence of your school community. Leaders can feel helpless (sometimes for years!) in effectively disciplining an under-performing staff member or in remedying the performance weaknesses. In the midst […]
Emerging Teaching Leaders Development Program 2018
The needs of emerging teaching leaders As principals and senior leaders we often see people on our staff who have developed a high level of skills in their teaching, and are showing lots of enthusiasm that is influential on the professional engagement of their peers. These people have the potential to become energetic and effective […]
Mission-Vision-Stategy Development and School Improvement
The ECS Mission-Vision-Strategy Program When boards and principals reflect on the question “Where are we up to?” … and “Where do we go from here?”, the school is at an exciting and consequential time of its development. At this critical juncture it is important that boards, principals, and leaders keep three strands woven carefully together: […]
Board Governance – Getting it Right
Are you confident that your board governance is functioning well and facilitating a dynamic engagement with your mission and the strategic direction to your school? You are probably aware that one of the most frequent reasons for dysfunction, limitation of progress, and relational breakdowns in a Christian school community is found in the flawed governance […]
Review and “re-commissioning” your school’s operations
Does your school need refreshment? Most of our Christian schools have emerged between 20 and 40 years ago from a God-inspired mission to give excellent Christ-centred education to generations of young people to lead them to love God and desire to serve Him throughout their lives. We always intended that our schools would help our […]
Tomorrow’s Principals & Senior Leaders’ Program 2018
Is our preparation of future principals & senior leaders good enough? All schools, at some point face the questions: “Where do we find a new principal to succeed our current one?”; “Have we got high quality strong Christian leaders to meet the leadership needs of our school?. In the broader picture, the whole Christian schools […]
Principal’s Support – Lightening the Load
Is your principal needing a little practical support? From time-to-time, it appears that the principal’s job is just too much for one person to handle. It is busy enough because of the daily demands and pressures of leading a complex organisation, but when special crises arise, principals are often so badly pushed for time and […]
School Leadership Restructure and Team Development
Is the leadership team in good shape? The leadership team is a key to the health and productivity of the school. But sometimes we find that our leadership teams have grown “rusty”, uninspired, tired, confused, or that they have fallen into unproductive “ruts” in their leadership through one or more of the following common consequences […]
Principal’s Review & Development Program
Do you need a process to review your principal’s performance and direct his/her professional growth? We all agree that school boards are responsible for how well their school is going. But board members sometimes ask themselves, “How do we know whether our principal is doing a good job?”; or “Are we able to make informed judgments […]
School Leadership Workshops/Seminars
Do you need some Christian-based professional development for your leaders? Principals and school leaders have a need of professional input for themselves and their staff that is “tuned in” to the real issues of schools, up-to-date with current leadership ideals, and thoroughly Christian in perspective. Some transforming leadership seminar/workshops Equipping Christian schools offers a number […]
Appraisal & Professional Development for Teachers
Is teacher training and in-service professional learning adequate? There is a growing concern in the community that aspects of teacher training and in-service professional development is inadequate to ensure that our teachers are growing in professional competence and/or in their capacity to coherently express their teaching in the context of biblical Christianity. Further, the National […]
Christian Curriculum Development
Is our teaching/learning comprehensively biblical and Christian? Many Christian school leaders are concerned that significant numbers of teachers are not properly equipped to be comprehensively Christian and biblical in the preparation and leadership of their teaching/learning programs. This is a difficult issue because most teachers are trained in secular universities, and there is very little […]
Applying Christian faith and a biblical worldview to our work
Our need for strengthening our biblical Christian worldview: Our schools are staffed, led and governed by sincere Christian people. But many of these good people struggle to understand the application of their faith and biblical thinking to the details of teaching, leading or planning and monitoring the big picture of the school’s operations. If we […]
Rubber on the Road Christian Thinking
Rubber on the Road Christian Thinking is a 206 page book (supported by an accompanying Study Guide) written for Christian teachers and leaders who want to develop their ability to apply their faith and biblical knowledge to form a comprehensive and consistent Christian worldview. The book applies a biblical Christian worldview to inform Christian thinking about […]
Principal Evaluation
Principals lead their schools in an environment of increasing accountability for a multitude of diverse outcomes that include leading and developing staff, building school culture, building school community, administration, instructional leadership, strategic planning, working with school governance, promotions, crisis management, change management, accountability to government agencies … all while trying to make sense of the […]
Is Australian Schooling still transformative today?
In my recent trip to Uganda, in the midst of extreme poverty, I encountered a virulent vision for the transformation of the Ugandan community and nation through the work of Christian schooling. The people expressing this optimistic passion for transformation were leaders and teachers in little Christian village schools with buildings made of saplings, dirt […]
An Eclectic Jesus?
An Eclectic Jesus? – The philosophers and poets had a point (but missed the core truth!) Some of us come to Jesus because He seems to offer the good stuff – freedom, peace, life, meaning, healing, joy. And then we can enjoy all that and happily agree with our religious friends that lots of other religions provide […]
School Improvement – will the NSIT do the job?
Continuous school improvement is a high priority for the attention of boards, principals and leaders for two reasons: We will never achieve our mission dynamically in a contemporary world with changing circumstances and needs without continuous critical reflection on where we are up to, and a properly planned strategic address to the issues we find […]
Toxic workplace” What to do if I am the leader who seems to be causing it
Advice to leaders who have people complaining about the negative effects of their leadership: If you are a leader reading this you are probably feeling “under the pump” because of what people are saying about some negative effects of your leadership, and you may be facing questions and pressure from your board because of the […]
Toxic workplace? What to do if one of the leaders under me is being toxic
Advice to senior leaders and boards who are struggling with how to address complaints from staff about their treatment by their leaders: Maybe you are a board chair and you have concerns about your principal because you keep hearing complaints or concerns from staff. Or maybe you are the principal and one of your middle […]
Toxic workplace? What to do if I am affected by toxic leadership
Advice to staff who feel they are negatively affected by neglectful, abrasive, or abusive leadership: If you are an employee who is reading this, you are most probably feeling that you are being negatively affected by neglectful, abrasive, or abusive leadership in your workplace. If you are, your “symptoms” might include: I feel humiliated by […]
Dealing with Toxic Leadership – some helpful books
Would you like to take the “abrasive boss” test?
We all recognise that the principal and senior leaders are the key players in setting the staff and school culture, and, as Christian leaders we all desire that our workplaces are both honouring to God and safe and pleasant places for our staff to pursue their mission. Sometimes, however we find that we as leaders […]
Do you want some tools in your Christmas stocking?
Equipping Christian Schools is offering you a complimentary e-copy of one of the following Christian school equipping tools:. For the board chair: Board Self Assessment Tool – a rubric of board governance knowledge and skills that will help your board to assess where they are up to across some 80 governance skill items. For the principal: Christian […]