Governance to Match Purpose in International Education
Hong Kong--I depart Asia for Chicago today even more convinced that international schools of all stripes are going through a sea change with regard to purpose. Gone are the embassy schools or institutions populated almost exclusively by the children of expatriate Americans, Brits or Canadians on full expat packages. Expats are still here and everywhere else, but international schools now serve a broader purpose; one that is poorly understood and maybe even yet to be defined.
Just as private, independent schools in the US have struggled at times to find their "public purpose", apart from educating the children of affluent families, so too are international schools struggling to define the ways they are valuable cultural assets to their larger host communities. Whether or not the school has a public purpose is absolutely critical to the way it is governed: if the purpose is largely private, then the governors function for the benefit of current constituents, but, if the purpose is substantially public, then governance is much more about institutional mission and sustainability.
And therein lies a question that has been nagging at me for days on this trip: Is it appropriate for (truly) international schools to have requirements that some (or all) governors hold a particular passport, or, for example, that the board chair always be an American or a Brit? I think not, especially if we want to advance the idea of global citizenship.
High time, then, for boards to take up the question of public purpose and become truly independent international institutions. Or remain outposts for expats; I am not saying that one size fits all, just that the governance model and composition of the board need to match the purpose of the school.