Abstract
Keywords
The human resource (HR) head of Fountainhead School, Surat, was reading the newspaper, and her face started contorting into a furrow as her eyes fell on a full-page advertisement for the announcement of a new school in the city offering the same International Baccalaureate (IB) programme as Fountainhead School (FS). She was not happy. She studied the page for a while gulping down her coffee quickly and set out to leave for a long day at school. On her way, she called up Utsav and Pinky—the training heads for senior school and primary school, respectively—and scheduled a meeting. So far, FS had been the only IB school in the city which made it the choice option for parents who wanted a novel approach to education for their children. The school had more than 2,000 happy children who loved their school. Gradually, over the years, FS had achieved the status of an elite and sought-after institute offering quality education. However, the turnover rate of teachers had been bothering the management for some time. With the impending advent of a new school, this problem was bound to escalate. The teachers trained at FS were sought after and usually received a red-carpet welcome at every other school in the city. The reason was simple, FS teachers were a well-trained lot and were used to hard work. This was the result of the excellent and rigorous training programme that the school adhered to. Tenacious training was necessary to achieve the standards demanded by the IB programme which the school had adopted since its inception. But this training was also becoming a bane for FS as other schools got to poach the well-trained staff who were lured with lesser workload, shorter timings and comparable salaries. The HR head was extremely worried that the new school would snap up her teachers and administrative staff left, right and centre, and a human resource crisis might be brewing.
Fountainhead School: The Labour of Love
Fountainhead took its roots as a preschool in Surat that was started by two young IIM 1 Ahmedabad graduates (who also happened to be spouses) Vardan and Ankita Kabra. They laboured towards bringing quality education to the city and soon found the trust of a like-minded Gujarati business promoter who helped them build the first IB school in Surat (Gujarat) in April 2005. They moved to a bigger campus in the year 2008 on a 9.8-acre piece of land on the outskirts of Surat at a village called Kunkani. The location was idyllic amidst lush green fields and nature.
Fountainhead became one of the 124 schools of India that had implemented the IB programme from nursery to grade 12. The International Baccalaureate Organization was founded in the year 1968 and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. There were 5,500 schools across 160 countries in the world that offered the IB programme. IB being a demanding programme had its own international standards to be followed by affiliated schools. The programme aimed at developing inquiring, knowledgeable, confident and caring young people. The students were classified by age in the early years programme, primary years programme, middle years programme and lastly the diploma programme. The early years programme was designed for kindergarten kids, primary years programme for grades 1–6, middle years programme for grades 7–10 and the diploma programme for grades 11 and 12.
Philosophy
The word ‘Fountainhead’ means ‘abundant source of knowledge’. The school has had a strong mission statement: ‘To nurture leaders with character and competence.’ All the policies, strategies and activities revolved firmly around this mission statement, which focused on the ‘student-centric’ approach of the school. Organizational values revolved around fairness, responsible behaviour, respect, excellence, win-win, integrity and sustainability.
The school believed in turning the students into lifelong learners and strived to provide a happy, purposeful, safe and nurturing environment to the learners. For this, the school management had recognized early on the need for good, capable, committed and well-rounded teachers.
The Need, Search and Selection
The school had a staff of around 302 teachers for about 2,250 students in the year 2022. Every year, on an average, 20–25 teachers would leave the school who needed to be replaced by new candidates. The management would actively anticipate this future need for teachers and worked for advance hiring. The school relied on two sources for the hiring: one, by prospecting applications throughout the year from the FS website that would turn into walk-ins and, secondly, twice a year advertisement on social media and in newspapers. These candidates were first screened by the HR head through an interview. Three main areas that would be tested for in each candidate were fluency in English, computer literacy and research skills. In the second stage, subject-specific knowledge would be examined through interview, test and a demo lecture by the subject-specific team leaders 2 . The final interview was usually conducted by the school head and the HR head to measure the cultural and value fit. If the candidate cleared all the given stages, then he/she would reach the stage where the salary was negotiated, and the preliminary offer was made.
Fitting up for the Role of a Teacher
After a rigorous selection process when an aspirant teacher was selected, the first onboard step would be training. The school laid down certain performance requirements from the candidate and clarified at the beginning itself that a permanent position would be offered only if the candidate met the expectations during the two-to-three-month training period.
Training for a new teacher was self-paced and self-driven with a lot of mentoring and support from the training and teaching staff. Detailed teacher training manuals, which consisted of common training manuals and subject-specific manuals, were given to the trainee as a first step of the training programme. The trainee teachers were expected to follow the manuals in which detailed steps of classroom conduct were mentioned. Along with this, trainees were expected to read a lot of relevant material, watch videos, fill up questionnaires on their understanding of concepts, observe classes conducted by regular and experienced teachers, assist regular teachers in preplanning and executing classes and so on. Weekly reviews in the form of interviews or viva voce would be conducted by the mentors. At the end of the programme, trainees were to appear for two viva voce that would be conducted by teacher trainers, senior teachers and mentors.
Teacher training was divided into three main modules:
IB and FS Philosophy Training
The first module was designed around the background, philosophy and policies of the school. To understand the background and the value system of the school, trainees had to read the material from the manual and watch specific videos that were available on the school intranet platform. Trainees are required to answer open-ended questions from the material and discuss their responses with mentors to ensure thorough understanding. The school has always been very clear that every teacher who joined Fountainhead should first understand the philosophy of the school, as the entire syllabus and pedagogy were designed on the pillars of the mission and values of the school. Trainees would be acquainted with policies for parents, students, teachers and administrative staff through videos.
‘To nurture leaders with character and competence’ was a tall mission statement which the school pursued. As per the school philosophy, leaders were those who could take charge of their lives, work effectively with others, do the right things even when no one was watching them and were internationally minded. To achieve this goal, the school adopted a holistic educational programme and a positive empowering environment. This could only be achieved if teachers showed leadership inside and outside the class and in the way they behaved. To imbibe this into the teachers, the seven habits as given by Stephen R. Covey, namely, being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, putting first thing first, thinking win-win, seeking first to understand then to be understood, synergizing and sharpening the saw were being taught to the trainees.
Pedagogical and Classroom Training
‘Teaching’ being the core activity of an educational institute, a core part of the training emphasized this area. Trainees observed a minimum of 15 classes during the training, gaining firsthand experience of classroom facilitation processes. For pedagogy, manuals, articles, videos on teaching and learning and so on helped trainees with the information needed. Theoretical learning and practical implications would go hand in hand at this stage. Subject-specific booklets were provided for self-paced study within a set time. Trainees independently mastered basic concepts aligned with the IB curriculum, ensuring a comprehensive understanding. After reviewing the material, trainees planned and delivered 10 demonstration classes. These sessions were overseen and approved by team leaders. The performance would be evaluated and the scope for improvement discussed by the observers. The trainee was then required to make a presentation about his/her experience.
Teachers would be expected to look after the organizing of the physical appearance of the classroom too. A unique feature of the classrooms in the school was that there was no set bench arrangement. The furniture arrangement was dynamic and could be changed as per the requirement of the class. This was planned before the class by the teacher. Other aspects of physical management of the classrooms included arrangement of class display, resources, academic material, teacher’s desk and student’s workplaces. They had to make sure that displays were learner centric. The displays were expected to be informative, interactive and purposeful. Teachers were required to follow a checklist for the same. The classroom management training also included tuning in and maintaining relations with the children, managing student behaviour, use of appropriate communication, allocating duties to students, academic planning, motivating students to get involved in activities, managing different types of learners, dealing with disruption by and confrontation from students and treating students fairly. Trainees learned these things through handouts, detailed videos and observation.
The school values were committed to inclusion, admitting children with special educational needs or physical disabilities. Teachers received special training to cater to the needs of differently abled students, including those who were slow learners. While imparting the training, the teachers were asked to imagine their class of 20 odd learners and prepare their session as per the needs of those specific 20 students including those with special needs. The expectations were usually set at very high levels. Though this had turned out to be a good way to train and develop teachers, it sometimes backfired in the case of new teachers who felt overwhelmed by the outcomes that were expected of them.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Training
Technology was pervasive in every activity of the school, and the teachers were expected to be technology savvy and willing to adapt to new technology from time to time. There are three broad areas where the use of technology was required:
Imparting education
The school believed in using state of art technology for imparting education. Most of the lessons were taught through audio-visual material. The children were supposed to use chromebooks 3 for all their work since grade 5. Virtually from grade 5 onwards, the students hardly wrote anything. They were expected to produce all their work—home work and class work—electronically using their chromebooks. In higher grades, for subjects like mathematics, the school had developed its own softwares or recommended softwares/applications for certain mathematical operations. The students were taught to use softwares for calculations and graphical solutions as well as for presenting their work using mathematical symbols.
Communication within teams and with students
The teachers were expected to give homework online and make extensive use of Google Classrooms, conduct assessments and exams on online platforms such as Go Formative 4 or the school software. Internal communication among the team leaders and teachers was also done through their intranet platform and teachers were expected to be on top of technology to be able to cope with the ICT requirements of the school systems.
Communication with parents
Communication with the parents would be done through mails or through an application called Nucleus. Teachers had to be very prompt in responding to mails by parents or comments in the daily diary which is a part of the nucleus application. They had to have regular meetings with parents which had mostly shifted to the online platform after the covid pandemic.
The school made prolific use of ICT 5 tools to facilitate learning and administration tasks; hence, ICT know-how emerged as a very important skill required by teachers. The ICT team would first conduct a test to measure the technical knowledge of the trainee teacher. After identifying the knowledge gap, trainees were given hands-on training by the ICT team. The school has been very clear in this aspect, and hence one limitation that it has been facing is the age of teachers. Older and more experienced teachers who might want to join the school were sometimes not encouraged or were unwilling to join due to the resistance to adopting technology as an important aspect of the teaching–learning process.
Personal Development
The school believed that nurturing students began with nurturing teachers, so the school conducted team-building activities, such as leadership meets, staff sports day, nature camps and adventure activities, which helped the teachers to become socially adaptable people within the school fraternity. These activities were aimed to bring them closer and motivate them. They improved relations and strengthened the bonds among them. Everyone strived hard to achieve a common goal. The chances of confusion or misunderstandings decreased, and communication became easy.
Reviewing Performance
Evaluation of teachers’ work would be done throughout the year and by every stakeholder. Teachers were given broad but specific learning goals for students that were defined by the IB board. Teachers were expected to develop teaching material on their own in a team. Teachers’ teaching material, session and lesson plans would be discussed and assessed before they went before the students. This would be done by team leaders of the specific grade. Team leaders of the trainee teachers observed the classes, classroom management and classroom decorations very frequently. They would provide continuous feedback through written and oral discussions. Teachers frequently met with team leaders and discussed their experiences. A host of positive as well as negative points would be discussed in these meetings. Peer learning happened by sharing of each other’s experiences. Feedback on teachers was regularly sought from students of higher grades through questionnaires.
The school ran a programme called One Day at School (ODAS), where parents spent a whole day at school. Parents had to silently sit and observe the classes of their child and higher-grade classes. Prior appointments would be made for this. After parents spent a day at school, they would be asked to fill a feedback form and have a 10-minute meeting with the programme coordinator or team leader to share observations and areas of improvement. Apart from ODAS, one-to-one parent–teacher meetings were arranged regularly. As the student–teacher ratio in any class is 20:1, a teacher was expected to know every child personally and to have information of the performance, progress and potential of each child. Parents could mail the teacher to arrange a brief meeting whenever they felt the need for it.
Formal exams for students started from seventh grade, and teachers were also made to write the papers that they set for the students to ensure standardization of the paper, and the level of difficulty could be gauged.
Teachers also underwent self-evaluation through an internal application. Team leaders discussed performance and ratings bi-annually and provided evaluation and feedback. After this, a third level of evaluation would be conducted by higher authorities including HR. Various aspects such as feedback from students, parents and team leaders as well as other parameters such as regularity and overall attitude and commitment of the teachers were evaluated at this level. Increments were decided based on the overall ratings at these three levels. In case of any discrepancy or dissatisfaction on the part of any stakeholder or teacher, a one-on-one discussion was resorted to.
Rewards and Recognition
Fountainhead compensated teachers and staff as per the industry standard and in most instances above it. It was one of those few schools that did not cut a penny from the salary of the staff during covid lockdowns. The salary of newly hired teachers was determined as per experience, skills, knowledge and readiness to start work. For the experienced candidates, salary was benchmarked with people who had similar years of experience.
For the personal and professional development of the existing and newly appointed teachers, workshops, life classes and activities were arranged from time to time. In-house workshops were conducted by senior teachers or coordinators to enhance subject-related knowledge and pedagogical skills. Teachers were given the opportunity to attend workshops conducted by other IB schools, IB regional offices and institutes or organizations in other cities. To promote reading, the school had initiated the DEAR (drop everything and read) programme, where for two hours a month teachers would be given free time to read professional development books. Teachers were encouraged for certificate courses such as nursery teacher training (NTT), diploma in childcare and education and BEd. On completion of BEd, ₹5,000 was given to the teacher as a token of appreciation. Fun activities were planned throughout the year to enhance team-building skills. The school had also built an in-house gym and provided dietician facilities. Financial literacy programmes on financial management, saving, tax and investments were arranged.
The facility of daycare was provided to teachers who had very young children. A 30% discount on the annual education fees would be given to parent employees during their first year at school; 35% discount in the second and third years, and from fourth year onwards, 40% discount would be given on the annual education fees for their children studying at FS. Employees did not have to pay a security deposit either. The teachers could all avail the facility of free transportation and lunch and breakfast at subsidized rates provided by the school.
Teachers were given ample support from the head of the school and principal for their interaction or issues with parents. The teachers had a lot of autonomy in designing the structure of their lectures or classes and were usually encouraged to plan innovative extracurricular activities for their classes in order to keep the students engaged. They were also encouraged to build healthy relationships with parents of their wards. There was immense involvement of parents in the teaching–learning process as parents were invited to deliver guest talks, read-aloud and panel discussions. In this way, the teachers also got familiar with the parents and even though informal communication between parents and teachers is discouraged, it gave the teachers and parents an opportunity to understand their child’s academic progress in a better way.
The school was not very particular about formal dress for either students or teachers. The teachers were required to wear decent, smart casuals. By and large, there was no restriction or fuss about what to wear at school.
The school arranged nature camps and field trips and organized staff sports day, adventure day, teacher’s day, staff dinners, teacher performances at the annual day etc. The school focused not only on body fitness but also on mind and soul through life classes, in-house workshops/training sessions and team-building events and so on, which resulted in self-analysis and introspection.
However, teachers felt that the physical facilities available at the school could be better. Primary-year teachers faced a problem of personal space and lack of air-conditioning in the teacher areas. The timings for teachers were 7 am to 4 pm. Teachers were expected to carry work to their homes also. The school followed the policy of documenting everything and, hence, teachers spent a lot of time making reports, feedback and filling out various forms as required by IB.
The work schedule was usually very tight as the school expected extreme levels of quality in teaching. The management of the school also agreed that the teachers of FS were expected to handle more work pressure as compared to peer schools in Surat.
Growth at Fountainhead
The school had a clear ladder of growth for all those who were willing to commit themselves and shoulder responsibilities for the development of the school. The management valued the years that an employee spent at the school and his/her growth was based on the number of years of working with the school. For this, the school tried to provide a comfortable environment to the teachers and other employees. The employees had a lot of freedom of expression and were encouraged to bring forth ideas and innovative practices to the organization. The innovative pedagogical tools brought in by the teachers included story wells, flipped classrooms and extracurricular activities related to sports, visual arts, drama, dance, theatre, filmmaking, music, movies and many more. Book clubs had become an integral part of every grade, and teachers had also started the trend of showing movies based on books to the students. The school promoted a liberal and conducive work environment where feedback, suggestions and criticism were dealt with fairness to achieve a win-win situation. The school always strived to keep its policies and processes employee centric.
Teachers and employees who had worked with the school for longer time periods professed that they would never leave the school and their teams for any other job. The atmosphere for the teachers was easy going, which bred a strong sense of loyalty among them. The school was keen to promote teachers who were good at their jobs and who were willing to and able to shoulder more responsibility.
Those who joined the school in the early years had already climbed the ladder of seniority in the organizational structure. Higher positions were more easily available during the early years of the inception of the school. Teachers would be promoted to team leaders, subject leaders or even positions such as vice-principal or head of school.
Progression came with increased autonomy, empowering them to make decisions independently without the need to constantly consult higher authorities for minor matters. This approach served as a training ground for succession planning, preparing them for future leadership roles within the school.
However, as the school grew older, the junior teachers found that there was a lesser chance of senior positions opening up for them and the process of moving up in the career ladder had become slow.
The Humans of FS
The school had a very strong value system and had devised an acronym FRREWILS (to be understood as freewill) in consultation and brainstorming with the staff members.
These values while interconnected with each other, represented different dimensions of the way each member of the Fountainhead team must always abide by in letter and in spirit. Every Fountainhead team member was expected to display these values:
The teachers who had spent at least three years at the school did not usually leave the school for greener pastures. The teachers were involved and committed to the teaching–learning process. In interaction with parents, the teachers staunchly defended the school policies.
Teachers were sometimes overwhelmed with the amount of technology that they needed to use for their teaching in class. They were required to keep abreast of the latest educational tools available for their subjects and included them in their pedagogy. Every year, the school was ready to experiment with new tools such as Google Classrooms for in-class teaching, Nucleus for interacting with parents and storing data of children which could be accessed when needed, numerous calculative, graphical and data analytics tools for senior schools, MOOCs platforms and many more. Everything was hi-tech. FS students are found to be extremely tech-savvy at a very young age. The teachers, students as well as parents were expected to keep up with technological changes and adapt to the new tools introduced time and again by the school. The school followed an international curriculum and hence the school and the teachers followed the guidelines given by IB in preparing the students to become world-class learners. The curriculum was based on international standards that prepared the students to face the world as it presently is.
The culture at FS was nurturing. Teachers as well as students were nurtured not only to excel at their work but to become good human beings. Instead of competition, the spirit of co-operating was embedded in the culture and value system of the school. Teachers and staff were always encouraged to work in teams. Any teacher facing any problem could always approach a mentor to whom he or she could reach out to. The role of the mentor was to help resolve the issue. Issues could range from classroom handling to subject difficulties to work-related stress. The people at FS supported each other to deal with problems.
The Present Scenario
The school had come a long way from being a kindergarten run by two people in a small flat to a 400-people plus organization which catered to the modern and international educational needs of a mega city. However, the school was facing a big problem with respect to teacher and employee turnover. They were at crossroads as to what could be done. They could let the quality of education suffer, for which they needed to take the teachers and staff through a rigorous training process. They needed teachers who were able to cope with the technology requirements of the school and such teachers were difficult to find and retain. Middle-aged, experienced teachers may be very good at teaching and would be more stable in their jobs but might not be able to learn and adapt to new teaching–learning tools. Meanwhile, 8%–10% employees would leave the school every year to join other schools or change their professions. Students and parents from higher grades had been complaining incessantly about the changing of subject teachers affecting the learning process. Students had to adapt to the new teachers, time and again which was difficult. Students also felt that this was adversely affecting their grades. Surat being a developing megacity, new schools were mushrooming around the city and, hence, lots of job opportunities were becoming available in the same field. So what should be the way ahead for FS? Should the HR head continue the rigorous training programme to improve the quality of teaching and strengthen the organizational culture in the long run or think of a short-term solution to curb staff attrition?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
Notes
ORCID iDs
