Scholarship / Describing my leadership role at school and gained experience - Chevening Scholarship [6]

Hi guys! Feeling pretty nervous about applying for Chevening! Could you please have a look at my essay? I would appreciate any comment or advice. Thank you!

Essay about my leadership and influence Chevening Scholarship

Since taking a leadership role at xxx School in 2015 some of my responsibilities included monitoring student achievement and continuous revision of the curriculum. At one of termly whole school meeting the discussion about overall low performance of ESL students was raised and I took the initiative to facilitate changes at school.

After analysing the ESL schedule and data collected from Key Stage leaders I noted that ESL lessons often took place during core subjects lessons which caused some issues in following the curriculum and poor performance of ESL students. At that point, I realised it was time to fight for the changes to foster equality and diversity of every student at school.

During meetings with the members of my department we reflected on current practices and defined main weaknesses, strengths and key factors to improve the situation. As a result, an action plan was created and presented to the line manager and then was approved by the Principal.

The proposed changes were significant - my team and I created a schedule which did not affect core subject lessons, moreover a strategy of grouping the students was changed and we assigned students to ESL lessons according to their levels and learning styles but not the age. The ESL students' results after a term using the new tactic showed its effectiveness as improvement of student achievement in Mathematics and Science as well as gaining English proficiency in shorter period was evident to the school community members.

The most important impact that my department made on school is that the other departments got inspired by our example and revised their strategies and explored the ways of grouping the students according to their needs.

Being a Council of International Schools (CIS) evaluator I have an opportunity to be a part of Visiting Team during the Accreditation Process and contribute to schools improvement around the world. Even though I have not been a team leader during the Accreditation Process, I have had a chance to use my leadership skills and influence the work process.

On my latest team visit, the team leader assigned every team member to chair a section in order to rate the school against CIS Standards. However, after a couple of days the team realised it was far to meet the deadline as some of the team members were not working effectively. I suggested the team leader to rearrange some team members in accordance with their abilities and interests. I believe it is important to be aware of skills and preferences of team members to create an adequate working environment. A meeting was called and I proposed team members who could speak local languages support the team with interview rather than wasting time on translating; another proposal was to divide the biggest section among all team members to save time and meet the deadline. The changes I proposed were followed by actions that enabled us to produce a rigorous report and meet the deadline.