Lucy M. Gowdie, Head of School
28 February 2025
Upon commencement of my tenure at the school, I spent time understanding the inherited leadership structure and have spent a substantial portion of the past two years understanding and refining it.
Schools, historically, are heavily hierarchical structures, with the Head, not dissimilar to a CEO, having once been perceived as omnipotent.
This is changing.
And it is with intentionality that this is changing in our organisation as we begin to work in a top down, bottom-up framework that enables entrepreneurial leaders who want to lead change efforts within the school, do so.
We are intentionally moving from a command-and-control construct, to a cultivate and coordinate one, and the foundation of this is built on the appointments that have been made in the past six months and the re-structuring that has occurred. It is further built on opportunities that we are providing for our Middle Leaders through whole school strategic projects and professional learning communities that align with our strategic direction.
The delicate eco-system of a school, unlike a manufacturing plant or a profit-based organisation, is a complex one, for the product is not a piece of furniture, it is a person.
Distinct from a car manufacturer, one cannot put a child on a conveyor belt and copy the mould 87 times over to produce the same outcome, just in different colours.
This is not how learning works.
Nor can it cut corners, or compromise on the quality of instruction, for that risk far outweighs the reward.
This is not who we are as an organisation.
Nor can it put the profit margin before the core purpose, as if material gain mattered more than the mission we are on.
This is not what our mission drives us towards.
I remember once being told that I was nothing more than a service provider.
While in its purist form this is relatively accurate, it remains, to this day, one of the greatest affronts to me in my career. For no one in education, well at least not those people who are true vocationalists, ever views their work in such an unemotive, detached and clinical way.
It is because we care, because we are committed, because we see our mission as so much more than a product, so much more than a profit, that we are working collaboratively to build a distributive leadership model that drives improvement and develops innovation; that delves into a deep analysis of the root causes of challenges our young people face with a conviction born of a higher purpose.
With the finalisation of the recruitment of the Primary Principal this past week, and the creation of a new Middle and Senior School, I am very much looking forward to articulating the framework for leading at ICS that we will use to forge our path into the future, that we will use to achieve our core purpose.
The ties that bind our Primary School, Nursery to Grade 4, our Middle School Grade 5 to Grade 8 and our Senior School Grade 9 to Grade 12, will begin to evolve in the coming months, and we very much look forward to sharing the structure, the scope, and the sequence of learning and leadership with our families in April.
As we embark on a series of workshops in the coming weeks, across the School Executive and the Educational Leadership Team, the evolution of this structure will come to fruition and will be shared with our community, in partnership and in purpose, always.
Lucy M. Gowdie
Head of School