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IB Asia Pacific Newsletter

Quarter Four, 2007

Message from the Regional Director

This is our fourth and final enewsletter edition for 2007. This has

been another busy year for our team. Growth continues to be

above the IB’s global average in Asia Pacific with an outlook for

a continuation of this trend but there is a lot of energy with a number of initiatives and forward planning with the Vision 2020 plans.

We would like to thank the many schools which have again supported our work this year, by hosting workshops, and/or releasing workshop leaders, committee members and authorisation team members or by joining schools to schools and responding to the call for volunteers. We wish the November session schools success with the Diploma examinations and a happy, relaxing and safe summer break.

Over the last two months we have had a number of opportunities to meet up with many of you at the Regional Conference in Singapore, at the Heads Conference in San Francisco and at the EARCOS Administrators Conference, in Kuala Lumpur.

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Regional Conference in Singapore

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Governance Meetings in Singapore

During the last week of November, the Singapore Regional Office also hosted the Board of Governors and Directors Leader Team Meetings in Singapore. A highlight of the week was the IB Community dinner where over 110 guests from the wider IB and educational community in Singapore attended a dinner held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The guest speaker was Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister for Finance and Minister for Education. The student speaker was Jennifer Ching from the International School of Singapore and speaking as an IB alumni, Han Nguyen, from our Projects Team in the Regional Office.

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Left: Guest speaker, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam  speaking on a vision for education in an increasingly globalised society

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Our guests at the dinner
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Left: Jennifer Ching, ISS Singapore

Below: Han Nguyen

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IB Community Dinner in Singapore

Governance Changes : Regional Council

Following a recent review of Governance across the organisation, the Regional Advisory Council and Regional Heads Representative Committee has been amalgamated into one Management Advisory Body – the Regional Council. Details of the Constitution of this group are on the Regional Council page of this enewsletter. Rod Fraser, the Principal of Ivanhoe Grammar has been elected Chair of the newly constituted group.

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Regional Council meeting in progress

Fees

To ensure authorisation processes are meeting costs a significant increase in application A and B fees took effect from 1 September 2007. These increases do not appear to have impacted demand for programmes.

Fees were increased in line with service costing indicators from

2006 however despite increases of more than the magnitude

indicated in this study, several factors have continued to impact

our ability to break even with respect to these services

  • The exchange rate of the USD against the SGD in terms of operational costs
  • Rising hotel flights and workshop venue costs around the region in relation to USD income for workshops
  • The doubling+ of rental rates in both the business and residential sectors in Singapore over the last 6-12 months

To mitigate against some of these changes, we will be asking

new schools to pay all application fees in future in GBP. Schools

in the region are currently invoiced for annual basic fees in GBP

also. The GBP application fee schedules are now posted on the

regional pages of the public website.

Joint Visits

Several schools are now taking part in pilots over the next two years to streamline the processes associated with joint accreditation/evaluation visits which will be offered as “whole school” options i.e. for schools that have IB programmes as the framework for the curricula at each existing level of the school. Marilyn George, from WASC is planning to join us in early January for an accreditation training day for all the programme managers.

St Pauls Grammar, UNIS Hanoi and the International School Suva have all had joint MYP/PYP visits this year.

We invite schools to provide articles to the January - March 2008 IB Asia Pacific Newsletter with the latest happenings at your school or if there are any special events, please email ibap@ibo.org  by latest Friday 25 January 2008.

Our best wishes to you all.

Judith Guy, Regional Director

IB Asia Pacific

Email: ibap@ibo.org

 


ALERT!

Are you alerting your colleagues and school community to our enewsletter?

Please can we have your support in doing this?

Vacancies in the Regional Office

- Regional Head of Programmes

- Professional Development Associate Manager (Teacher Education)

- PYP Associate Regional Manager

Due to the continued demand for our programmes and services in the region, we are currently advertising another three programmes positions : We are looking for an additional PYP Associate Regional Manager to join the PYP team. This position is also available as a short term contract for the right candidate wishing to take leave or a sabbatical from their current post.

We are also recruiting for two new positions: a Regional Head of Programmes and a PD (Teacher Education) Associate to join the IB Professional Development Team team. The Regional Head of Programmes is a senior role in the region.

Please look on http://www.ibo.org/jobs/

for the job advertisements.

Applications close 8 January 2008.

New Ombudsman Role

Tony Flatley, has recently

been appointed to the new

role of IB ombudsman. Tony

is based in Quebec and can

be contacted at

ombudsman@ibo.org

flatley

Why has the Board of Governors decided to create the ombudsman position?
As the IB works with more and more people it is inevitable that misunderstandings and disputes will happen from time to time. Having an ombudsman is a proactive way of handling that.

How would you define the ombudsman role?
The ombudsman’s role is to help a person help themselves.

The ombudsman is there to listen to people, that is, both internal IB staff and external stakeholders who have concerns or questions of an individual nature. However, it doesn’t always have to be a negative concern it can certainly be to share a good experience. The ombudsman’s role is to help a person go forward with a situation.

As the IB moves forward and looks toward 2020, things can become more complicated. Everyone reacts differently to change, but it is the role of the ombudsman to calm any scenario. The ombudsman is someone to turn to, somewhere impartial to voice any concerns.My initial job is to diffuse situations and to ease a path to a solution.

Office Move

As our current building in Shenton Way has now been earmarked for demolition and redevelopment, the Regional Office will relocate close by to a larger space in Tower Fifteen – an office block quite close to our existing offices  in late January 2008. Our new address will be:

IB Asia Pacific
15 HOE CHIANG ROAD
#11-04/06
TOWER FIFTEEN
SINGAPORE 089316

We will retain our existing phone and fax numbers.