Rector’s Report to the November Council meeting
My report to the November Council meeting addressed Budget 2017 and a review of Strategy 2025 implementation during 2016. Extracts from this report are included and updated below, and organised under the following headings:
- Budget 2017
- Strategy 2025
- 2025: School Character
- Umalusi Accreditation, 2016-2023
- The transformation imperative
- Risk Profile: Strategic Risks
- 2025 Synergy Projects
- St Stithians as a research space
- Reviewing and articulating a St Stithians educational philosophy
- Student Academic Reports
- College Committee on Student Awards
- Online School – iTunesU pilot projects
- Engagement with international school-leaving qualifications
- 2025 People Growth and Talent Development
- 2025 Community Engagement Curriculum
- The evolution and formalisation of the Thandulwazi Academy
- The GDE-endorsed Private Public Partnership with a School of Specialisation
- 2025 Institutional Advancement and Sustainability
- Meeting with the Gauteng MEC for Education, Panyaza Lesufi
- Legacy Fundraising for major and strategic projects
- Annual campaigns with a professionalised programme
- Developing the Policy on Financial Sustainability, Advancement and Fundraising
- 2025 Facilities 2030
- The new building phase 2013-2016
- 2017-2018 Taking a collective breath and planning ahead
- Classroom modernisation and sports facilities upgrades
- 2025: School Character
Read the Strategic Plan 2025 here.
Budget 2017
Detailed and extensive documentation for Budget 2017 was included in the Council pack, including the journey of budget approval prior to the Council meeting. The document titled Salient Points Budget 2017 outlines the framework and key principles, as well a narrative of debate and decision-making. There is an extensive section on the cost structure of the College’s offering, and issues to address as we engage with alternatives and prospects in the future.
On the path to the final Budget 2017 proposal, the Head of Finance, Mr Johnny Smith, and I held individual meetings with each member of the College Exco to scrutinise and evaluate the budgets for each school and Campus department. The Council’s Finance Committee, Remuneration Committee and Planning and Development Committee were all directly involved in the formulation of the budget. The College Exco spent a full day drawing Budget 2017 to conclusion. The budget parameters were debated and engaged with in a meeting of myself, the Chair of Council, the Chair of the Finance Committee, and the Head of Finance. Preparing the annual budget takes one into the heart of the College: its strategy, priorities, programmes and personnel.
The St Stithians Council formally approved Budget 2017 at its meeting on 3 November 2016.
Strategy 2025
1. 2025: School Character
The wisdom of foregrounding ‘school character’ as our first, and indeed overarching, theme of Strategy 2025 is reinforced almost daily in my role as I interact with role-players across our College. The focus on the questions ‘Who are we?’ ‘Who do we want to be?’, and the engagement with our intent and core values, provides us with an enabling language and conceptual framework to keep on addressing institutional identities and priorities.
1.1. Umalusi Accreditation, 2016-2023
In terms of education legislation, all independent schools are required to be accredited by Umalusi, the national accreditation body. St Stithians participated in the first phase of this requirement, submitting a desktop evaluation that secured the College provisional accreditation in 2006. Annual monitoring reports were submitted in succeeding years. During 2014, our schools submitted extensive further documentation in order to secure full accreditation, and this was followed up in October 2015 by two site visits of Umalusi evaluation teams. During September 2016, we received official notification of the ‘full’ accreditation of our five schools for the period 2016-2023. There are bi-annual post-accreditation monitoring requirements, with our first process falling due in July 2018.
According to education legislation, all public schools are deemed to be accredited. I am of the view that the participation of St Stithians in the Umalusi accreditation process is an important contribution to the evaluation framework of educational excellence. Whilst a bureaucratic imposition, and a huge time commitment, the Umalusi accreditation process has been beneficial for St Stithians.
I wish formally to congratulate and thank our team of staff who led and guided the Umalusi submission.
As a condition of our membership of ISASA, the College is required to participate in a five-yearly quality assurance process under the auspices of the Independent Quality Assurance Agency IQAA. Our last IQAA process took place in 2013, meaning that our next evaluation will occur in 2018. There has been a heated exchange between ISASA and Umalusi about various matters, including the double process of Umalusi accreditation and IQAA evaluation. For the foreseeable future, we will participate in both processes, and we are keen to be a ‘light on the hill’ in the South African educational landscape.
1.2. The transformation imperative
In the South African context, and particularly in application to institutions, the word ‘transformation’ has a specific application in relation to the more general challenges and opportunities of ‘change’. Change requires vision, leadership, new mindsets, risk-taking, relationship-building, directed management, and reflection. ‘Transformation’ adds the specific dimensions of South Africa’s past and present, demography, assumptions, identity, pain, anxiety, and embrace and celebration of cultural diversity: a point of engagement between the school and its surrounding society of racialized realities, patriarchy, gender violence and social inequality.
Issues of ‘race relations’ are pervasive in our society, and in our College. We need actively to engage with these issues, which commonly exist below the surface and then ‘erupt’ in specific circumstances. The hallmark of our transforming school is our ability to encourage, and enable, meaningful and engaged conversations and relationship-building to take place amongst our students, staff and parents.
Against the benchmark of the ‘hair controversy’ at Pretoria Girls’ High School, St Stithians is a more culturally inclusive space, and yet we too have our blind spots, our inclusions and exclusions. There is also a constraint in that there are limits to the concept and practices of ‘uniform’. At many levels of our College, conversations about race, identity and belonging are taking place, and the Honour Code and Saints Character provide us with our own language of engagement. We have a Council Transformation Committee, and school-based transformation organisations.
In my Rector’s Chapel Services with each school this term, I have addressed themes of transformation, identity, belonging and inter-connectedness. The text I referred to is that of the ‘body and its many parts’ 1 Corinthians 12, which speaks both of the synergy of St Stithians and the importance of right relations in our community of school, city and nation.
1.3. Risk Profile: Strategic Risks
The Chair of the Governance Committee, Ms Nerine Kahn, and her associate Mr Afzul Soobedaar an expert consultant in strategy and risk, facilitated a College Executive meeting on developing a strategic risk profile. Clarity was gained on the importance of identifying the key risks in relation to the main priorities of Strategy 2025. This process of identification was workshopped, and the finalisation of a Strategic Risks Statement is in progress. The outcome will be submitted to the Governance Committee for discussion, and thereafter to Council.
Sitting under the top strategic risks are the matrices of operational risks. Working groups have gone some way down the road of finalising these and a deadline of the end of Term 1 2017 has been set.
2. 2025 Synergy Projects
Synergy continues to grow within the DNA of our College of Schools, creating a counter-point to silo mentalities. Among a number of initiatives underway, I highlight the following which have a strategic character.
2.1. St Stithians as a research space
I have progressed a number of conversations about leading, alongside others, a co-ordinated research programme into ‘best practice’ and ‘new practice’ at St Stithians. Developing this programme will create stretch, innovation and reflection; it will advance synergy; and our writings and publications will add a further distinguishing feature to our educational mission.
2.2. Reviewing and articulating a St Stithians educational philosophy
As agreed at the last Council meeting, one of the College’s new policies will be titled Educational Philosophy and Purpose. The current Learning and Teaching Policy contains a Preamble which is the starting point of the new policy. I chair termly meetings of the Heads and Academic Deputy Heads in the Prep Schools and, separately, in the Colleges: we have engaged this year with the concept of an aligned educational philosophy, while enabling each school to flesh out its distinctive educational methodologies appropriate to age and gender.
2.3. Student Academic Reports
At my initiative, school representatives are reflecting on the format of our student academic reports and how they reflect our educational and assessment methodologies. An emerging principle is that while each school’s academic reports can reflect a specific character, there should be explicit agreement on certain core aspects.
2.4. College Committee on Student Awards
I chair a College Committee on Student Awards which, during the course of the past year, has made significant strides in aligning awards across academic, cultural, sporting and community engagement achievement in the Boys’ College and the Girls’ College. I am also aware that the Boys’ Prep and the Boys’ College have been co-ordinating on aspects of awards, so that there is a more common awards culture across these two schools. Levels of collaboration are high in this area of school life.
2.5. Online School – iTunesU pilot projects
The Girls’ Prep and the Boys’ Prep are creating online modules using the iTunesU platform for interactive eLearning. As one staff member put it to me: ‘The online school is already starting!’ There is a long way to go before we ‘scale’ the online school, but these initiatives and the creation of an ICT network infrastructure capable of expansion are laying the foundations.
2.6. Engagement with international school leaving qualifications
St Stithians College is a proudly South African school and a strong affiliate and role-player in the Independent Examinations Board IEB. It is our expectation that the vast majority of our matriculants will seek entry into South African universities. We are aware, however, that a growing number of our families are considering overseas universities, anxious about the impact of the current university turmoil on the quality of the country’s top universities. A good IEB matriculation enables application for entry into top universities in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, to mention some of the destinations of St Stithians matriculants. The IEB’s benchmarking with the Scottish Highers and the New South Wales Education Authority offers an international quality reference.
A small St Stithians task team is looking into initiating a pilot scheme of engagement with Cambridge A-level courses which would run in addition to the regular school day.
3. 2025 People Growth and Talent Development
It is worth stressing that this third theme of Strategy 2025 highlights the focus St Stithians gives to attracting, developing and retaining a body of teachers and administrative staff who are highly motivated, inspire excellence and make a world of difference. Significant sums are allocated to professional development opportunities, and an accountability to implement best practice.
The College’s performance management system has been implemented in an integrated manner for the past three years, with a common framework of review conversations, rating, the Distinguished Performer Rewards and the management of poor performance.
The Council Report of the Head of Human Resources, Ms Kim Urquhart, documents the major developments underway in this strategic theme.
4. 2025 Community Engagement Curriculum
As reported to Council in Term 1, the community engagement activities of the schools are numerous
and significant. Adding greater co-ordination and collective purpose remains a task of the future, as outlined in the Strategy 2025 framework.
Here, I focus on two institutional initiatives that give focus to the community engagement curriculum of St Stithians.
4.1. The evolution and formalisation of the Thandulwazi Academy
Under the leadership of Dr Themba Mthethwa Head of Thandulwazi and the oversight of the Thandulwazi Trustees, the Thandulwazi Academy is taking a number of important new initiatives in 2017, particularly the formalisation of an ECD Early Childhood Development component in the Teacher Development Programme, the piloting of a Thandulwazi Principals Partnership, and the introduction of Grade 9 classes in the Saturday School.
In designing the ECD initiative, Themba Mthethwa is engaging with Penreach Penryn College which has an established track record in this phase. The Thandulwazi Principals Partnership seeks to link ten St Stithians parents or alumni with principals of schools linked to Thandulwazi in a personalised mentoring relationship.
The creation of additional administrative capacity in Thandulwazi is an important pre-condition for a more formalised offering. So too is the growth of our incipient relationship with the Gauteng Department of Education’s Head Office and with the South African Council for Educators SACE, which accredits teacher professional development. St Stithians is also participating in an ISASA-led initiative to advocate and extend teacher internships in independent schools.
4.2. The GDE-endorsed Private Public Partnership with a School of Specialisation
The Thandulwazi Academy and St Stithians College have formally indicated interest to participate as a development partner in the Gauteng Department of Education’s Private Public Partnership initiative. This project seeks to partner ‘education development’ organisations with selected public schools chosen by a Gauteng Department of Education task team. The purpose of the partnership is to promote the ‘whole school development’ of the public school, while also advancing that school’s specialisation as either a commercial school, a Maths, Science and ICT school, or an Arts school. The GDE has selected 29 Schools of Specialisation and, of these, five prospects to participate in the first phase of the Private Public Partnership for the period 2016-2020.
5. 2025 Institutional Advancement and Sustainability
Elsewhere in the Council Pack is a detailed report of the Advancement Office. Here, I concentrate on four points from a Rector’s vantage point which address the 5th theme of Strategy 2025.
5.1. Meeting with the Gauteng MEC for Education, Mr Panyaza Lesufi
During September 2016 a St Stithians delegation led by myself and Mr Carel Nolte, Chair of Council met with Mr Lesufi at his GDE office, together with Mr Vuyani Mpofu DDG: Education Support. It was an engaged and positive meeting in which we
- Conveyed the purpose and intent of St Stithians and the Thandulwazi Academy.
- Clarified and there was a lack of clarity that St Stithians is a not-for-profit school and its financial model is therefore different from a for-profit school with investors expecting a dividend.
- Offered the facilities of St Stithians for meetings of the GDE Head Office and GDE-sponsored conferences.
- Discussed the challenges of implementing the Department of Basic Education’s new Additional South African languages policy.
- Invited the MEC to visit St Stithians and to attend major events.
As Rector, I indicated my willingness to participate where needed and appropriate in educational discussions and debates.
5.2. Legacy Fundraising for major and strategic projects
As a College Executive and as a Council we need to improve our ability and experience of making the ‘ask’ and creating donor opportunities for major projects, whether for investment in buildings, scholarships or endowment. The experience of other schools and universities with successful legacy fundraising campaigns is that if the institution’s leaders are donors, then the ‘ask’ has far more impact. The Chair of Council has led from the front, and our collective challenge as Exco and Council is to give ourselves and to ask others to do so.
The two Pavilion legacy projects are both ‘short’ of R2,5m round figures in achieving their fundraising targets. These outstanding amounts can be met through a combination of a larger number of donors giving in denominations of R5k, R10k or R20k; or a smaller number of donors giving denominations of R100k upwards. This is our collective challenge and opportunity.
It is imperative that, in addition to the above scenario, we initiate and sustain bequest and other long-term programmes of giving that are focused on legacy fundraising.
5.3. Annual campaigns with a professionalised programme
Our annual event calendar is populated by a number of existing fundraising initiatives within the schools and the Old Stithian Association. There is also a new emphasis on growing sponsorship and facilities hire revenue. As we develop our ‘Advancement’ concept, we need to co-ordinate, channel and report on – better than we do at present – the existing fundraising projects, and to consider the effectiveness and purpose of existing and new activities. This goal will be a key Advancement and Rector’s Office output during the coming months as we plan for, and implement, our annual fundraising programme.
5.4. Developing the Policy on Financial Sustainability, Advancement and Fundraising
In the process of formulating the new policy on Financial Sustainability, Advancement and Fundraising, Mr Alistair Stewart Head of Advancement and I have developed and led discussion of a new governance structure. The proposed new structure has been tabled and discussed at meetings of the College Exco, Governance Committee, Finance Committee, St Stithians Foundation, Thandulwazi Trust, and of the Chairs of the PTAs. The formalisation of this structure will continue during 2017, alongside the development of an updated Financial Sustainability, Advancement and Fundraising Policy.
6. 2025 Facilities 2030
6.1. The new building phase 2013-2016
The completion of the Girls’ Sports Pavilion and the Boys’ Prep Classroom Building at the end of 2016 brings to completion a ‘new building phase’ from 2013-2016 which has included the lower Ring Road, the Athena Art Centre, the Girls’ College Amphitheatre, the Dace Hall and new Junior Prep Gateway, the new Operations Building, and the Boys’ Sports Pavilion. The last building project of this phase will be the car park next to the Astros and Junior Prep Gateway.
The planning and implementation of the above projects has been according to the Facilities 2030 Plan and the Campus 2053 Master Plan.
The funding of the above projects has been enabled by the interest earned on our annual cash reserve, by the new students’ entrance fee, by the introduction in 2015 of a capital development levy as a component of the annual school fees, and income received from facilities hire. In addition, the two Sports Pavilions have been associated with a new donor fundraising drive, with major donations by the Chair of Council and the Old Stithian Association, supported by grants from the St Stithians Foundation and the revenue of the My School Card.
6.2. 2017-2018 Taking a collective breath and planning ahead
During 2017 and 2018, we will take a collective breath on new building projects in order to consolidate our cash flow, as planned in our Finance Committee, and as we plan the rollout of the next phase of Facilities 2030. To this will be added the new Campus Landscape Master Plan, created with the assistance of the landscape architect appointed during 2016, and including a focus on our waterways and school entrances. During 2017 we will advance the Alternative Energy Project with the proposed installation of Photo Voltaic Panels in order to generate our own electricity.
Planning will proceed with design concepts for the Saints Bridge including a Performing Arts Centre, and strategic decisions will need to be made on whether to proceed with creating a Pre-Primary School and expanding Boarding in the Girls’ College. Projects underway, to be funded from sources other than regular annual capex, are the new Hockey Clubhouse on the north side of the Astros, and the expanded Squash Centre. To be considered in the next building phase are a Hall in the old Operations area next to the Girls’ Schools, and an extension to the Music Buildings in the Boys’ School.
Facilities 2030 includes the expansion of staff housing provision, primarily through acquiring new properties. The Sunset Bay initiative is currently under negotiation.
6.3. Classroom modernisation and sports facilities upgrades
A principle of Facilities 2030, built into our annual budget from 2015 onwards, is to include an annual provision for classroom modernisation, school upgrade projects, and sports facilities upgrade projects. These are not large-scale capex projects, but the annual provision enables forward planning which, when combined over a number of years, will show significant impact in creating improved and innovative facilities.
The ‘rebirth’ of the High-Performance Centre is one such sports facility upgrade project, integrated into the development of a whole-school sports philosophy and long-term athletic development programme under the development of our campus Head of Sports Science.
