From the Head of School

 What Happens When

Some of the biggest decisions are made silently and unseen: those that sit behind the day to day, that don’t intrude on our interactions, because they are what frame them.  

In schools, we often accept as given the standard range of subjects from English and Maths, through science and humanities, stopping by languages, to PE, the arts and design.  Nor do we often delve deeply into the ultimate purpose of learning them.  

We perhaps don’t engage too much because there is not much we can do about them.  We go to school because society demands it, and a good job would not be possible without it.  The names for division of knowledge into discrete areas of study may vary, but everyone seems to agree that they just about covers what is important.

We can often take for granted how we divide our time.  The eight hours of the day, the five days of the week, the seasonal holidays culminating in a very long summer absence.  We occasionally gripe but we don’t expect to change anything.

And maybe we won’t, but at ISA we are trying to open up some of our behind the scenes decision making so at least it is seen; to listen to people’s thoughts.

One of my bigger jobs is to create the timetable (schedule).  Every year it is slightly different as the number of classes changes and course offerings evolve.  We made some big changes a few years ago to Grades 6 to 8 as we introduced the IB’s middle years programme (MYP).  We don’t have to do anything as dramatic for the 2026-27 timetable, but we do have to make some tweaks to make it align better.

It is also an opportunity to reflect on whether we have got the structure of the school day right.  We don’t have complete freedom - the IB demands a certain number of teaching hours for each subject. Families wouldn’t thank us if we decided to start at noon and end at 8pm.  It is not realistic to double the winter holidays and halve summer.  But there are details we can adjust - the flow and balance of breaks and lunch for example, the start and end of days.

Middle and high school students have already been asked for opinions, and some parents have already given suggestions.  I have an ongoing discussion with colleagues.  In my next head of school coffee on Thursday morning, I will introduce some of the main considerations and ask for input from anyone interested.

Decisions about timetables can’t be made by consensus - they follow a pretty strict logic.  Classes and teachers can only be in one place at one time, classrooms host just one event at a time.  But those decisions can be better seen and not so quiet.