Despite the pandemic and its aftermath, international school growth continues, seemingly unaffected and perhaps even strengthened.

More and more international school chains are opening campuses in even further flung parts of the globe, as well as the more conventional hotspots such as the Middle East and South-East Asia. 

For many teachers, start-up schools are an intriguing proposition; there is something alluring about being a part of building something from the ground up. I joined my current school as a founding member of staff, and there is the idealism inherent in helping to create an educational Elysium, free of the entrenched ways of working I had seen in previous well-established schools.

As I found, however, whle aspects of an Elysium can be forged, start-up schools still come with their unique set of challenges.

So let’s examine some of the benefits and some of the costs in deciding to join an international start-up school.

International schools: the pros and cons of joining a start-up school

Benefit: You will have a voice in decision-making

Start-up schools tend to open with much smaller cohorts of teachers and in the first year of operation it is not uncommon for only one teacher per subject area.

This creates a numerical advantage when it comes to being heard; a principal is hearing 10 rather than 100 voices, for example. 

This can mean that a teacher with a particular passion in, for example, flipped learning may gain precious time and space to share that skill and its benefits to the teaching community. 

Cost: It can become competitive

Let us imagine that all of our 10 new teachers joined a new school partly in order to be heard. That creates a lot of voices, all with different educational philosophies, backgrounds and ways of working. 

In the early days, start-up schools can be intense places where, almost like in some reality show, a smallish group of volunteers are thrust together all at once and the usual jostling for position, status and attention can occur.

Our founding principals had a very clear, well-defined vision of what the school would become and then helped to steer decisions. But if you have someone who is less able to keep everyone focused or make a final decision, the school could quickly lose direction.

Benefit: Your career can move quickly in a start-up school

These young schools can sometimes grow more quickly than even the ownership expect, and that can create opportunities for founding staff to step up.

With a smaller pool of staff to choose from and often deserved loyalty placed in founding staff, many teachers find that their careers skip forward a beat or two.

Cost: The complexity of those promotions

Start-ups are a different breed to the long-established schools that most of us have been used to, and taking on more responsibility in a young institution requires a very specific set of leadership skills.

With no strong foundations to build upon and no institutional history, leaders in start-up schools need huge amounts of innovation, flexibility and drive. Rather than standing on the shoulders of giants, you have to set the course, and this does not suit everyone. 

I have seen very experienced school leaders, used to well-established schools, flounder when given a blank canvas and the expectation of doing something unique.

Benefit: New Schools are exciting

Think of all the things we teachers take for granted; chairs, tables, registers, students… and now imagine none of them yet exist and the only thing that does exist is the skeleton of a school. 

I have already used the phrase “blank canvas” but a school due to open on 1 September really is an odd, intriguing and novel place to be in, say, late July. 

For example, student numbers could be growing daily, and with that other associated administrative work; class lists, duty rotas, canteen options, even how many chairs and tables need to be ordered. 

But for those of you with a pioneer spirit, these new buildings can be an educational nirvana. Entrenched attitudes, age-old systems and protocols that nobody can really be bothered to evolve - none of those things exist in a new school. 

The phrase “that’s just how we do it here” does not exist, until you start to say it. 

In my current school, we were able to trial new ways of, for example, giving verbal feedback, and new appraisal systems that did not require Filofaxes full of paper-based evidence. 

Cost: New schools can be unpredictable

Until working in a new school, I assumed that students just “appeared”; that every school had some God-given right to have hundreds of children educated in them, and plenty more on a waiting list. 

How wrong I was, and you might be surprised to learn that every school that ever opened started its life with zero students. 

Therefore, new schools are constantly guessing when it comes to student numbers and, like if you’re in a small boat first leaving shore, those early months and years at sea can be rough.

This can mean that initial promises of new positions, salary increases and external development opportunities may not transpire as you first expected, if the student numbers do not grow as planned. 

Is it for you?

Like Marmite, brand new schools are polarising. 

Those who like flexibility, fluidity, a gallows sense of humour and a flair for innovation may thrive in these unique environments, whereas teachers who need well-established systems, a sense of order and control, as well as predictability in the workplace, may want to think twice.

Being a founding member of staff has suited my personality and skill set, but it is perfectly fine for some of us to be better maintainers of a garden than those who sow the seeds.  

Andy Bayfield is assistant principal at St Joseph’s Institution International in Malaysia