School Leadership Advisor at Aga Khan Education Service, Kenya (AKESK)

Purpose: 

To work with the country Heads of Academics and school leaders (Headteachers, Deputy Heads, Heads of Academy and their leadership team members, Heads of Department) to ensure Aga Khan Schools have professional, competent and well qualified senior and mid-level leaders using the AKS Quality Standards as a benchmark to build leadership competency in order to drive school improvement to ensure high performance across AKS.
This role involves a blend of face-to-face and desk-based work.

Responsibilities

Leadership Profiles

• Develop School Leadership Profiles including a Headteacher, Deputy Head and Head of Department that will define the characteristics of future AKS school leader.
• Support country teams to review current appraisal and staff development programmes using these profiles, identify gaps and work to enable solutions.
• Develop and deliver in-house leadership training programmes based on a needs’ analysis.

Mentorship

• Develop an AKS mentorship framework to build the skills of school leaders.
• Provide mentorship for each group of school leaders to support them to carry out responsibilities with impact.
• Identify and train school leaders as mentors to enable them to support other leaders using the AKS mentorship framework.

Training & Development

• Research and outline an AKS school leadership development programme and source delivery partners.
• Establish and lead regular Professional Learning Community meetings to enable the sharing of best practice.

Coaching Programme

• Develop an approach to coaching drawing on an accepted and researched model and pilot an AKS Coaching Programme aligned to Standard 1 – School Leadership of the AKS Quality Standards for Schools with supporting tools that can be used to develop and support school leaders and aspiring Heads of School.
• Enable and support school leaders to use the coaching programme to support school staff in driving improvement in their own school/country context.
• Pilot this programme, by enabling school leaders to coach and mentor peers across the network, measuring success and enabling its dissemination.

School Improvement Self Evaluation

• Develop evaluative skills in leaders including sharpening the ability to understand school self-evaluation and approaches to external evaluation.
• Support leaders in understanding on how to improve their schools to develop an agreed process and approach to school improvement planning and implementation.

Deliverables

• School Leadership Profiles
• Coaching programme in place and implemented for AKS school leaders
• AKS Mentorship Framework in place for AKS school leaders and implemented.
• An outline School Improvement and Self Evaluation framework
• Demonstrable improvements in school leader competency, confidence, skills and practice.
• School Leaders demonstrate their understanding and ownership of developments to implement improvements with increasing independence.
• Demonstrable improvements in students’ outcomes, in the broadest sense, the quality and richness of students’ learning and their subsequent achievements.
• Closer collaboration and alignment of practice across the network of schools

The requirements

Essential Qualifications

• Qualified Teacher Status (or equivalent)
• Honours degree or equivalent

Skills and Experience

• At least 10 years’ school leadership experience
• Proven ability to work with school leaders to help them improve their schools.
• Experience of leading change and improvement across a school/group of schools
• Experience in observing and evaluating school leadership and teacher quality and providing feedback.
• Experience of mentoring and coaching other staff
• Ability to plan and deliver effective training and development programmes which meet identified needs of each school.
• Excellent oral and written language proficiency in English
• Data analysis and use of schools’ performance data to inform decision-making.
• Excellent ICT skills
• High degree of professionalism, commitment, and integrity
• Cultural awareness, adaptability, understanding and sensitivity.
• Commitment to promoting the safety and wellbeing of students, ensuring that the school’s Child Protection and Safeguarding policies and procedures are promoted.
• An ability to work flexibly, including some weekends and evenings, as and when required.
• Ability to travel across Europe, Asia and Africa

Desirable

• Master's degree in Education (or other relevant field)
• Education leadership qualification