The Way Forward - meeting the stakeholders

I attended the meeting at Renaissance College on Monday to discuss "The Way Forward". This was the 2nd of 3 meetings organized by the ESF (the first one is mentioned below) .

The meeting was chaired by Chris Forse (Head of Parent and Student Services), and started with a short introduction by Heather du Quesnay (Chief Executive). We also heard from Kendy Wong (Finance Director), Graham Ranger (Education Development Director) and Peter Kenny (Principal of Renaissance College). Then questions were invited from the audience.

[My original intention was to write a neutral account of the meeting and then offer my comments, but I concluded that this would make it rather disjointed. So I'm afraid you'll have to make do with my opinionated account.]

Comment: I found the meeting interesting, but if the objective really was to consult with the "stakeholders" I don't think that it was successful. Very few ordinary teachers attended, and I suppose that the members of the school management teams (Assistant Principals, Deputy Principals and Principals) felt obliged to attend but unable to challenge their ESF bosses. There were some parents, but mostly from Renaissance College - parents at Sha Tin Junior School appear not to have been told about the meeting, which might explain why so few turned up.

Unsurprisingly, the meeting was used as an opportunity to raise questions and concerns about day-to-day matters, mainly related to Renaissance College. Peter Kenny fielded these well, as you would expect, but they should really have been raised in another meeting. The teaching of Chinese also came up (as it always does), but it seems that Wang Xiao-ping (the ESF's Putonghua adviser) has not yet finalised the plan he is working on - though two schools (presumably Sha Tin Junior is one) will be starting a trial of the new curriculum in January.

Even for those who had come to talk about "The Way Forward" and managed to read the document in advance of the meeting, there was a whole lot of background information that was missing. Heather du Quesnay did spare us from "death by Powerpoint" but it might have been helpful to explain more about issues such as the constraints placed on the ESF by the government, the history of Canadian International, Phoenix & Renaissance, and the relationship between ESF Educational Services Ltd (which runs Renaissance College) and the ESF, and between ESF Centre and the schools.

Instead Kendy Wong struggled to explain the way that the ESF in investing in Renaissance College (rather than property), leaving Renaissance parents concerned that their school fees were being used to give the ESF a return on its investment and other ESF parents to wonder why the money from their school fees had been used to invest in the new school.

Heather du Quesnay's answers were clearer, but not always related to the questions that had been asked. When challenged as to why the ESF had a "business plan" and was looking for "business opportunities" she explained that the ESF needed to become more professional (which is not quite the same thing).

There was some discussion about the IBO. It was clear that there is a strong momentum towards adoption of the PYP, MYP and Diploma programs, but Renaissance is the only ESF school that is fully committed to all three and decisions are being left up to the individual schools (though all secondary schools will offer the IB Diploma from next year).

The issue of the subvention was also raised. Heather du Quesnay said that she felt that the chances of retaining it had improved since she had joined the ESF but that it was still not clear what would happen. Her view is that the ESF must make plans for the future without waiting for this decision to be made, and she also pointed out that the go-ahead for Renaissance College was given before she joined the ESF.

As I said at the beginning, what I found most disappointing was that it didn't seem that this was really about consulting the stakeholders. Although there was plenty of time for questions, the speakers avoided dealing with some of the more difficult issues and never once did they ask whether the questioner was happy with the answer or invite supplementary questions.

I wonder whether the lack of debate on the key issues made the meeting a success or failure in the eyes of the ESF management.