#WeRGIS Weekly

At GIS we are all learners, and I was pleased to be able to attend a useful conference on Saturday entitled ‘Visionary Leadership for Future Success’, held at Wellington Academy Silicon Oasis. I attended workshop and panels, including leadership traits, embedding Arabic and Islamic into school eco-systems and another on Governance, Compliance and Risk. It was time well spent and I brought back many ideas to GIS.

Recruitment of new staff for next academic year is a priority. I would like to thank our Executive Leadership Team and also Middle Leaders for their involvement in such a thorough process, which includes CV sifting, search fairs, zooms, demo lessons, and in-depth interviews. We must appoint the very best teachers and we know that this effort is time well spent. Retention is also crucial and I would like to provide some information to anyone concerned about ‘teacher turnover’. I have heard rumors/concerns expressed from some sources of high teacher turnover at GIS and this is absolutely not the case. Last year our turnover was exactly the average of GEMS international schools. The year before this, we had one of the lowest turnovers in the GEMS network at 13%. This year will again be very low (we have very few staff leaving), much lower than international averages and a positive sign that our staff want to remain at GIS. I hope this reassures you. Details will follow in due course of the new staff joining in August. If any parent would like to speak with me about this, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Health and Safety remain a focus at GIS and this week our students enjoyed a Civil Defense Fire Drill. This more comprehensive drill was also a chance for the Civil Defense unit to test their own skills in a drill designed to practice ‘rescuing’ a member of staff from the building.  The students also enjoyed the chance to engage with the firefighters. 

On Monday our U14 boys tennis squad travelled to The Aquila School for their first fixture of the season. With 6 points up for grabs from 2 doubles and 4 singles matches GIS came out victorious with a 4-2 win.

Our U19 Netball squad travelled to Raffles World Academy for their last game of the season. The girls were unfortunate to lose this one, but hold their heads up high in what was an extremely successful season for our first ever competitive netball squad at GIS.

On Thursday our jaguars had a busy day of fixtures. We put together two U13 teams to host Jeddah School of Knowledge for 2 friendly fixtures. As it is the off season for our boys and some of them had not played together previous it was always going to be difficult. Both teams lost their matches, but will have learnt a lot from the experience. Also on Thursday our U19 girls volleyball squad travelled to Raffles World Academy for a DASSA league fixtures. The girls had a comfortable 2-0 win making it 2 wins from 2. With the majority of this squad in G11 or lower we can expect big things from them next year. Finally our U16 girls volleyball team travelled to Nord Anglia International school for a fixture. The opposition proved too strong but there were some very good performances, which the girls will take positives from for their last fixture of the season next week.