Investing strategically in the success of our students
Last month, the Board of Directors approved the budget for the 2024-2025 school year, to be adopted at the upcoming May 16 AGM. In advance of that meeting, I wanted to provide some information on the strategic investments contained in this budget that will serve our students.
First, a reminder that in a not-for-profit organisation like FIS, every tuition dollar goes to your children’s education. 78% of the budget is used to pay faculty and staff salaries and benefits, with the rest going to our operations and facilities. Next year’s budget relies on a 6% tuition fee increase. Today I am proud to share that just over half of this increase will go to additional HR investments in support of our clearly established strategic objectives (the other half is dedicated to absorbing inflation, contractual salary increases, and building capacity toward the repayment of our EDB loan). Probably for the first time in the history of the school, we are able to transparently share the direct connection between the new investments and a schoolwide strategy. The graph below shows how these new investments are distributed among the petals of our strategy.
As you can see, 84% of these additional investments funded by the increase in tuition fees goes directly to teaching hours and positions related to our Students. A few examples include but are not limited to: additional Mandarin teaching to open new levels in secondary international stream as well as the Mandarin A option; a new position to open a “classe passerelle” in our primary French stream, a system to better our support our French language learners; a FLESCO position in French secondary; an additional Learning enhancement teacher in international stream primary; a Vie Scolaire position in BPR; etc. 15% of the additional investments go to positions in support of our Academic Learning Environment, with operational positions in our facilities and administrative support departments. 1% goes directly to our sustainability initiatives to increase the number of hours of gardening in support of our holistic gardens program.
As we aim to fulfil our strategic promise to become the top-of-mind international school in Hong Kong, we are proud of the investments made to provide the best international education to our diverse and engaged community. We are also grateful to our parents for their efforts and ongoing support that allow us to develop new programs and better support.
