Essay Sample on AKIS: Investing in Quality Education for Student Aspirations

Introduction

Al Khor International School (AKIS) is owned by Qatargas operating company limited. The school has earned international recognition due to its continued provision of quality education in the institutions under their operation. Investment in provision of best quality education has been aimed at responding to the needs and aspirations of the students who join the institution. The school has invested heavily on facilities, digitized learning, and provision of a wide range of opportunities that identify, nurture, and develop talents and interest of the students. The school has a wide range of programs ranging from kindergarten to post 16 years age programs. The institution has specialized in offering British curriculum, central board of secondary education of India as well as the ministry of education and higher education curriculum including Arabic language, Qatar history, and Islamic studies. World-renowned programs are applied in the institution to promote students experience after school in creating good character interpersonal skill and confidence.

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AKIS is an educational institution that seeks to achieve international education standards, and its vision is to become an educational institution of excellence. The education institution has significantly invested in meeting the needs of Qatargas employee's children at both higher education and also to prepare them for the global workplace as globalization continues to be a universal reality. The institution is founded upon four major strategic choices that are instrumental to the overall success and ability to sustainably meet stakeholder's expectations. The school emphasizes academic and operational excellence, which is a primary need for AKIS to be able to continuously outperform its objectives in the short term and the long run. The second ambitious strategic choice is high stakeholder engagement and partnership which has significantly influenced the need for the education institution to research on the best leadership approach which can help to sustain stakeholder partnership in the education institution to improve learning and teaching quality in the institution which is crucial in improving student's performance. Another critical strategic consideration is that AKIS seeks to promote cultural diversity, professional integrity, and collective responsibility of all the stakeholders. As such, both transformational and transactional leadership approaches are significant considerations to help AKIS to achieve its strategic choices and objectives. Leadership is viewed as the most critical need for AKIS to meet its academic development plan that was launched in 2016 with the results being expected in 2021 with academic excellence, improved student experience, and high stakeholder satisfaction and engagement being significant considerations. This paper will seek to elaborate on how AKIS can leverage a leadership approach to achieve all the strategic goals and objectives.

Transformational and Transactional Leadership Application in AKIS International School

Based on the idea of transformational leadership, the effective leaders formulate a vision that inspires the future (Smith 2012). An educational institution with a vision that idealizes and depicts the position where it ought to be in the future greatly helps the institution grow (Nazim 2016). The vision of an educational institution gives direction, priority setting, and provides a marker, and this helps in determining whether the institution has been able to achieve the intended goal (Nash 2012). Creating a vision, institutional education leadership takes into consideration the strengths of the institution and can use a wide range of tools like core competency analysis, Swot analysis, and PEST analysis (Smith 2012). Application of such tools helps the schools to do an analysis of their situation and think about how the organization can evolve as well as how other organizations may behave (Rahim and Razzak 2013). The institutions with innovative ideas shape their activities which enhance successful competition. After developing a vision, the organizational leaders give attractive reasons to the workers and stakeholders why there is a need to support their vision. The people should be in a position to see, feel, and have an understanding and eventually embracing the vision. Transformative leaders create a picture of a good future to realize their visions (Nyamubi 2018). AKIS has borrowed from transformative leadership. The school administration has formulated a good vision which is to be a worldwide known educational center in the provision of education services to cater to the needs of the children of Qatar gas employees. Through this vision, the leadership of AKIS international can give inspirational stories and explanation of the vision in a way that, stakeholders, student and the employees of the institution can relate with the institution hence improved quality teaching and learning in the school. Combination of analytical and vision creation with the passion of values that are shared has helped the school come with quality programs attractive to people, students, and employees of the school; hence, success.

According to Nazim (2016), transformative leadership also focuses on intellectual stimulation. A leader challenges the current status of the situations and encourages employees to be creative in an organization. Creativity in an institution enables the employees to come up with new ways of performing their functions and provides new opportunities for learning. In AKIS institution, the administration provides a suitable environment where teachers and the non-teaching staff can implore their method of doing things which has promoted creativity and in return, it has led to exceptional performance in the institution. The school has invested in technology that has been widely used by teachers in delivering curriculum content. Teaching and learning in the school have been made interesting due to the use of technology. Students have a positive attitude towards learning due to creativity encouraged in the institution, and this has led to an improvement in teaching and learning the institution.

Individualized support is also a crucial aspect of school leadership that improves outcome in an educational institution (Nash 2012). The management in the institution of learning offers support to the employees whom they lead. To promote good working relations and supportiveness, leaders ensure good communication lines. The communication lines are open in such a way that employees have the freedom to share information and ideas and the leaders offer direct recognition to any contribution made by the employees to the success of the organization (Eboka, 2016). Leaders and management of AKIS have capitalized off the idea of individualized support. Giving assistance to individual employees gives them the feeling of being part of the institution which promotes good teaching and learning atmosphere in the school. The students also in the school are offered support depending on their interest and talents, which has promoted excellent. Proper communication channels existing in the institution facilitate sharing of information and ideas hence fostering effective teaching and learning in the school. The administration also recognizes an individual for their contribution towards improvement in teaching and learning quality.

Motivation and inspiration of employees enhance good performance. Leaders have a clear vision which they explain to the people they lead. They also help employees to have the same experience and passion for success and achievement of organizational goals; this is achieved through motivation and inspiring the employees. In an organization, programs are implemented, and people are enthusiastic and give support at the start. However, the enthusiasm fades with time, and there may be challenges to revive it (Mohiuddin 2017). Good leaders can understand this situation and put effort to work all along with the project or program to have a connection between people's needs, goals, and aspirations of all the employees. The effective leaders can link expectations of hard work, which produces excellent results as well as the expectation that producing good results attracts incentives. Linkage of those two expectations motives employees to work hard in order to achieve great success due to rewards that accrue from good results (Nazim 2016). AKIS has applied motivational and inspirational skills to its employees, which enhance quality teaching and learning. The institution through restating of vision in connection to benefits to be acquired upon achieving of the vision has promoted the achievement of quality learning and teaching in the school. Leaders in the school exercise expert power, which has made other employees have believed in them hence easily motivate and inspired to work hard (Sultana, Darun, and Yao 2018). Exercising charisma leadership has motivated and influenced students and teacher towards hard work for quality teaching and learning.

Management of vision delivery plays a big role in promoting quality performance. Proper management of the work needed to deliver vision should be carefully undertaken by the leaders themselves or through delegation to other managers in the institution (Den Hartog, Van Muijen, and Koopman 1997). There is a need to make sure that there is a successful delivery of role delegated. In order to achieve these team managers should come up with performance goals which should have a linkage with the overall vision of the team. The leaders should ensure the management of change effectively. Managing change effectively ensures changes which are needed for delivery of vision are well implemented in a smooth and thorough approach and by having the support of the employees and the stakeholders (Smith 2012). AKIS has utilized experienced management to manage change in the school to ensure quality teaching and learning. The institution has also successfully managed cultural diversity by providing all the population is well represented in the school. People with different backgrounds have perspectives that have been positively utilized to promote success.

Coaching employees and building teamwork promotes quality work in an institution. Transformational leaders conduct individual and teamwork development activities to enhance performance. Understanding team dynamics is very critical in developing the team. Leaders ensure their employees have the necessary skills and abilities to perform their duties and deliver the vision of the educational institution. Employees undergo training and regular coaching to enhance individual and team performance. A proper channel of communication, giving, and receiving of feedback enables gauging whether skills and knowledge attained useful to the organization (Nyamubi, 2018). AKIS is improving the quality of teaching and learning through coaching employees and building of teamwork. The administration of the school develops skills for their team or departmental leaders and creates right environment for continued success. Professionalism and integrity of the institutional employees have always been highly regarded.

Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership theory has an assumption that leaders in the educational institution have to exchange what employees can do with again (Hamilton 2010). According to this theory, employees are depicted as people or are not self-motivated and who sh...