Dear Members of the School Community

From the outside, one focus of the school in the past and current school year has ostensibly been dealing with some of the rather irritating events we were faced with.

These were school-political issues such as the situation of the Business College, questions about the school’s Articles of Association, differences between the former board and the German and Swiss Consulates, replacement or re-election of the board, school challenges such as the online learning phases (sixths rule, thirds rule), a super-spreader outbreak in Hong Kong and the opening of the school to all students under the condition of regular voluntary testing of all staff.

Some issues, especially those of a political nature, have generated a great deal of attention, unrest and disparity in the school community.  This could lead one to assume that the quality of a GSIS education may have suffered or that school management may have become too distracted and moved to survival mode. However, I would like to emphasise that the academic and intellectual development of our students, as well as the emotional and social development, have never been influenced by political issues. School management, department heads, teachers, as well as students, have remained unaffected and have taken up the challenges of school learning under the completely new circumstances and conditions of the pandemic. We progressed in all our development tasks, from curriculum development in the English International Stream to the internationalisation of the German International Stream, to the best possible preparation for the final examinations in both streams.

Furthermore, our school-wide Strategic Action Plan is a detailed action-orientated supplement to the Strategic Plan published last year. Our Strategic Plan has five pillars:

1. Teaching and Learning
2. Holistic Education
3. Finance and Operations
4. Communications and Development
5. Governance and Leadership

It was supplemented in all departments from Kindergarten to the Secondary Department by a detailed Strategic Action Plan, which defines the further substantive school development work. In the process, objectives, subgoals, actions, indicators, timeframes, responsibilities and evaluation procedures were precisely defined and agreed upon for internal school use, thus creating a guideline for school development in all areas.

In future, all areas of school development will continue to be evaluated on an ongoing basis. The board and school management agree that the stakeholder survey from the end of 2017 requires a follow-up survey in order to maintain the evaluation circle of “survey – evaluation of the survey – definition of objectives – implementation – evaluation of the objectives. The quality inspection (Bund-Länder-Inspektion[BLI]) of the Central Agency for German Schools Abroad (ZfA), which had to be postponed several times due to the pandemic, is also to be resumed in the next calendar year in combination with a preceding peer review and an online survey. This sets the course for further development and analysis of the previous development steps in order to ensure strategic, well-founded and profoundly evaluated quality development.

The high quality of learning and teaching in the context of our mission statement, which stands for “educational excellence in a vibrant, creative and caring community”, is our first and foremost concern at GSIS. This has never been compromised or jeopardised, but has always been the centre of everything that we do as a school.

I wish you a wonderful weekend.

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