During my practicum, I had the chance to speak to a number of staff here at Taylor's International School Kuala Lumpur, I have gathered that the organisation is very well organised and systematic. It seems that communication between all levels of management is effective and functional. I have also noticed that all staff are well informed about most things going on in the school. Should they not know how to address your queries, they would direct you to the relevant person who can.

           

          The roles and functions of departments in Taylor’s International School Kuala Lumpur can be categorised into three main aspects namely;

 

1. School academic unit

2. School administration unit

3. Co-Curriculum activities unit (CCA)

 

School academic unit

 

            The school administrative body in the school comprises the Admissions and Marketing department, Finance department, Facilities department, Human Resources department, Office department, and the ICT department. All of which reports to the Chief Operating Officer also known as the Principal of Taylor’s International School Kuala Lumpur, Peter Wells. There is an estimate of 45 administrative staff in the school's administrative unit.

 

Primary Organisation Chart of Taylor’s International School Kuala Lumpur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                Each section is managed by a Head of Section (HOS). The person in charge of the Head of Section is Ms’ Lynne Cadenhead. She is in charge of the planning, running and the welfare of the designated sections assigned to her. In the primary school, there is Key Stage 1 and 2 of which there are both coordinators and leaders to plan curriculum and monitor the running of the curriculum for the year. Key stage leaders administer and plans the activities of the relevant years under them. Moreover, Year leaders’ act as supervisors and mentors to teachers who teach in the particular year group, for instance Mr’ Victor Ferreira is the Year leader of Year 3. The function of the Year leader is to monitor teacher and student performance of the entire year group throughout the year and provide necessary feedback to the teachers on their performance and areas to be improved on. Teachers and year group leaders would collaborate to set learning objectives or outcomes and weekly activities to be carried out in each subject. Each teacher will then be assigned to a particular subject to plan lessons for the rest of the semester. Year leaders are class teachers and also sometimes the key stage leader. 

 

            Before the start of every year, the Head of Section would hold an academic meeting involving Key stage leaders, Deputy of Co-curricular Activities, Deputy of Guidance and Deputy of Malaysian academic subjects to determine the direction and plan the objectives and activities for the upcoming year. There are also several courses for teachers to attend throughout the year as part of the continual professional development (CPD) at TISKL. Attached to this post is a copy of the CPD record for year 3 teachers. 

 

CPD of Taylor’s International School (Primary)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Scrutiny Form

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           As the school transitioned from the national curriculum to the international curriculum, the structure of organisation had also seen changes. Local teachers are still learning to adapt to the international style of teaching and have little experience running the curriculum. Hence, expatriate teachers who are well trained in the running of the international curriculum have been placed in key areas. The idea is to engage the skills and expertise of expatriate teachers to guide and assist local teachers into the international approach to education while still retaining best of existing values and approaches. The CPD programmes available for teachers seem interesting and encourage the development of useful skills for teachers at school. They help teachers continually grow and improve on their practice. 

 

           As the school gravitates away from the national syllabus, the school culture, teaching and learning approaches seem to be moving from an academic centred design towards a more humanistic curriculum design. So far, there seems to be great collaboration and feedback between all the teachers and their guiding superiors. Most of the day to day operations seem to embrace the core values of the organisation. 

 

School administration unit

 

           The principal role of the admissions and marketing department is to manage student enrolments in all levels of the school. There are 6 staff in this department. Some of the daily functions of the admissions and marketing team include speaking to potential students and parents about the school and its workings, organising open weeks, and organising placement tests. Additional functions of this department includes creating and planning a projection of recommendation of number of teachers, classrooms and students per-classroom for the following year. 

 

           The standard enrolment procedure begins with filling up an application form and an upfront payment of a non-refundable registration fee. The application period requires applicants for primary years to take a placement test to assess applicant's English abilities. They are also required to attend a session where teachers would observe prospect students in a mock classroom setting. The objective of this observation is to identify signs of potential learning or social disabilities. The application for each student must be sanctioned by the principal, head of session, and head of admissions before receiving the letter of offer and acceptance into the school. 

 

          In my opinion, I feel that it is a rather strict application process for incoming or future students. Moreover, the benefit of the doubt is that it may also help identify early onset of possible disabilities and recognise the student's current ability. This can help ease the stress of learners by actually assigning them classes which are within their abilities. However, this type of application process seems challenging on administration and academic staff for large commonalities of applicants and can only be carried out in schools which have enough resources. 

 

 Finance Department 

 

          The obligation of the finance departments is to safeguard proper accounting records of income and expenses of the school to generate financial reports for management decisions. Therefore, the organisation of the finance department helps ensure each staff are given roles to complete tasks to account for income and expenses. As such, the finance department's organisation chart consists of staff in charge of feels collection, payment of expenses, and produce of financial report. 

 

 Facilities Department

 

         The duty of the facilities department is to manage and classify school facilities. This department also manages bookings of facilities for daily use as well as events prior to the school’s alignments. Planning of expansion of campus facilities is part of what this department does as well, whereby the would consult with academic staff to find out what facilities are needed. 

 

 

 

Human Resources Department (HR)

 

        The human resources department is unswervingly involve with all things doing with staff welfare, medical leaves, annual leaves, recruitment of staff, staff insurances, management of pay rolls and organising staff events.

 

 Office unit 

 

         The office unit acts as a support system to the main academic and administrative staff. People involved in these departments are attached to Head of Sections to act as secretaries and management assistants. The school nurse is also wrought under this unit. 

 

ICT Department 

 

           The ICT department is responsible for installing, handling and sustaining the IT infrastructure of the school. The ICT department also provides support to teachers during lessons should there be any technical error or failure of the system. Another service this department offers is organising of professional develop courses and IT training for teachers and staff at TISKL related to IT. 

 

Co-Curriculum activities unit

 

            Taylor's International School Kuala Lumpur proposes a variation of Co-curricular activities in school. There are three types of activities which fall under the co-curriculum unit. There is the Co-Curricular Activities (CCA), After School Activities (ASA) and the Extra-curricular activities (ECA). 

In the previous years, there were four periods dedicated to CCA in a week. Meetings during CCA would include one sport activity and one club for students to attend. However, due to changes in the structure of the timetable, CCA lesson time has been reduced to two lessons a week. To compensate for the lost time, the school has extended these activities to be held after school. Hence the term After School Activities. Currently, CCA periods cover sport activities and ASAs are related to games, clubs and societies. 

 

           On the other hand, ECA's are activities which are held after school but engage external trainers and resources during running of the activities. Students are required to pay some amount of fees for these activities. It takes place mostly on Fridays as school ends earlier than the usual days.  

 

Co-curricular Activities (CCA) 

 

        Students would spend time learning about a variety of different sports during CCA time. Students in Key Stage 1 and 2 are currently practicing for sports day which is expected to be held in June/July 2016. After sports day, CCA will revolve around learning basics of football, netball, basketball, floor ball and bench ball.