Kevin J. Ruth Executive Director, ECIS

As educators, we are architects of educational experiences. We are designers, and our designs carry meaning and value for our students, usually over the course of many decades as they leave us and enter the world of work and contribution to society. The theme of this year’s leadership conference, Designing on Purpose, refers to this long-term value. There is a larger strategy behind our design work, and it has to do with how the myriad pieces of our jigsaw puzzle fit together, producing a cumulative effect that is strategic in its balance and its impact on the world around us. Just as when we undertake a puzzle, we try to complete the frame first, so that we have an overall sense of the project. In the world of schools, compliance factors are our framework, from governance to curriculum maps to health and safety. Yet compliance is not enough. A beautiful puzzle, and indeed a beautiful and transformative education, contains pieces that go beyond compliance — pieces that challenge us with their shape and size, that force us to question our strategy and how we are living it. The ECIS Leadership Conference for 2016, therefore, pushes us to ask ourselves to identify the boundaries between compliance and going beyond. This conference will promote a 70/30 structure, in which 30% of its content is about meeting or fulfilling compliance-related issues, whilst a full 70% of conference content will concern itself with pushing us to go beyond compliance — to push the boundaries of educational design, whether from the perspective of facilities, curriculum, or even safety and security. How much is enough, and what about those of us who wish to go beyond the prerequisites? How might we design on purpose, to use the book title from our opening keynote speaker, David Butler, Vice President of Innovation at Coca-Cola? From new business models for schools to leading practices in safety, security, and child protection to roles for new assessments in admission and harnessing the power that is advancement, we are called to design on purpose in international schools in more ways than ever before. Join us in learning how to lead in these times of turbulence and profound opportunity.

                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                

                                                               2016 ECIS Leadership Conference Sponsors: