The school’s current strategic plan, Our Way: More Intentionally Lakefield, was developed over a four-year period (2008-2012) based upon broad community input, and is intended to position LCS for continued success in the competitive and rapidly evolving Canadian boarding market.

The concept of “more intentionally Lakefield” conveys the plan’s focus on enhancing and accentuating the school’s traditional core areas of strength. Being “more intentionally Lakefield” means having a set of shared beliefs we live each and every day that guide us, inspire us and make us who we are. The following are Our Beliefs as stated in the plan:

• We believe that our small, caring community and its approach to educating teenagers is unlike anything else in the world

• We believe that teenagers learn and mature best when they are in the company of fellow students and teachers who respect their individuality and make them feel happy and safe

• We believe that our physical campus, in all its natural beauty and hominess, provides the optimal environment for living and learning, inside and outdoors

• We believe that a campus and community like ours that is alive “24/7” is simply the best way to do high school, whether you are a boarder or a day student

• We believe that the Lakefield way helps produce graduates who are good, caring people equipped to do amazing things, which is a powerful and important promise in today’s world

• We believe that the world needs a Lakefield College School now more than ever, and that the community values and spirit that are at the core of our school have never been more relevant to society 

The vision stated in the plan is for LCS to be, “Canada’s finest boarding school, preparing students best for life in the 21st century.” The plan includes six key goals to support the realization of this vision:

• Enduring: ensure the school has the resources needed to implement the plan

• Challenging: through a rigorous and flexible program, challenge students to think critically, take risks, be creative and work collaboratively

• World Renowned: position LCS on the world stage as the finest Canadian boarding school 

• 24/7: maximize the 24/7 potential of our boarding environment

• Connected: deepen the connectedness of our community; significantly upgrade our IT platform

• Inspiring: ensure we continue to attract and retain outstanding faculty and staff, and support their professional development 

It has become clear to us that our culture and values have not guided us sufficiently while implementing the goals of the strategic plan. We have focused too heavily on pursuing our strategic priorities without placing sufficient emphasis on fostering relationships, stewarding our culture and nurturing our core values. Ensuring that culture and values are at the core of the decision-making process, as well as how we measure our success, is the Leadership Team’s highest priority going forward. Towards that end, the Leadership Team recently completed a review of all planned new and ongoing initiatives using our values as the filter and the impact on our culture as the lens. Over the next year, the Leadership Team’s priorities include: a heightened focus on deepening relationships with students, faculty and staff; reviewing and improving our human resources processes to ensure transparency; and enhancing IT support for faculty and staff.

It has also become clear to us, over the past several months, that we need to foster greater common understanding and alignment on certain central aspects of the plan. For example, what is meant by being “Canada’s finest boarding school” and what does a heightened focus on academic challenge and rigor entail? Achieving better understanding within our community on these and other important questions will be critically important as we review our priorities.

Each of the six key goals includes a variety of specific initiatives to support its achievement. These initiatives are to be implemented over the ten-year term of the plan (2012-22) and are generally rooted in enhancing programs that build upon our core areas of strength. Key initiatives under each of the six goals include:

• Enduring: during the first three years of the plan, we raised $32 million of our $100 million ten-year goal and achieved 40% alumni donor participation in the Hepburn Challenge; $68 million remains to be raised by 2022 to support capital projects, endowed financial assistance and endowed programs 

• Challenging: we have significantly expanded our Leadership, Character and Values program; implemented a new student schedule; made enhancements to our teaching and learning model and launched the Lakefield Educator’s Apprenticeship Program (LEAP), which pairs new and experienced teachers together in our classrooms; looking ahead, we are focused on raising the necessary funds to implement Thrive, our comprehensive health and wellness program for both staff and students

• World Renowned: we are implementing a wide variety of enhancements to our marketing and recruitment capabilities with the goal of broadening our applicant pool of students who are the right fit for LCS

• 24/7: we believe strongly that our boarding environment provides superior opportunities for learning and we have consequently invested in enhancing our boarding program, both with respect to facilities as well as after hours and weekend programming; this past fall, we opened our newest residence, Uplands House; over the remainder of the plan, we plan to build a new dining hall, refurbish Winder Smith Hall into a Science and Innovation Centre and build an additional new residence

• Connected: we have made significant enhancements to our IT capabilities, including moving to a Mac-based platform school-wide, launching a new learning management system (Edsby) and equipping the entire campus with wireless; looking ahead, we will complete the implementation of our new learning management system and support our community in its adoption

• Inspiring: we have launched a new cloud-based human resources management system (ADP) and completed a variety of HR policy updates; looking ahead, we will conduct a detailed review of all HR policies and procedures with support from the new Board Human Resources Committee (HRC)

We are significantly bolstering our Leadership, Character and Values program, supported by a transformational anonymous gift. We are also planning to fully implement Thrive, our comprehensive health and wellness program, beginning this year and building over the next several years. We will consider implementing additional programs depending upon the needs of our students, the recommendations of our staff and the availability of funding.

LCS has been a proud member of the Round Square since 1979 and was the first Canadian school to join the organization. The Round Square’s ideals are democracy, environmentalism, international, leadership, service and adventure. These ideals align very well with the core values of LCS, which are at the centre of our strategic plan.

No, LCS does not have any plans to establish such overseas partnerships or arrangements. We assume this question is referring to the sort of arrangements some of our peer schools have entered into to establish branded overseas campuses and/or programming. 

Our total student population is capped at a maximum of 365 by resolution of our school trustees. While holding our total student population constant, we have adjusted the boarding and day composition of our student body. This was driven by the decision, endorsed by our school trustees, to discontinue our Grade 7 and 8 day program in 2011 due to the shrinking market for students in the local area. These 36 Grade 7 and 8 students are being replaced with boarding students in Grades 9 through 12.

The incredible geographic diversity of our student body has long been a key contributor to our educational experience. We are committed to maintaining a balanced representation of students from the various countries in which we recruit, and we currently have students from 28 countries. Historically, international students have represented roughly 25% of our total student body. Our current goal is for our international students not to exceed 30% of our student body.

The strategic plan does not include specific targets for expanded recruitment in any particular country or region. The goal is to diversify the number of countries represented by our international students, with no more than 10% of our boarding population coming from any one country. We feel this increased diversity is important to enable us to improve our selectivity, help us weather the economic ebbs and flows of our traditional international markets and further expand the global perspectives our international students contribute to the school. Current countries of focus for increased international student recruitment include Japan, Russia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Spain.

There have been no changes to our admissions criteria. As always, our focus is on ensuring we enrol students who fit with our culture and values, who possess the potential in mind, body and spirit to succeed at our school and who will make a positive contribution to our community. For more information on our admission process, please visit the Admission section of our website.

Our admissions standards and assessment criteria do not vary by country. We have no plans to change our admissions standards or criteria.

The average number of students leaving the school (attrition) for the past several years has been 37. This includes students who leave during the year (voluntary withdrawals and expulsions), those who don't meet our standards for promotion to the next grade level, those who do not wish to return and international students who only planned to attend for one year. Families complete the re-registration process by May 1st each year.

Our attrition for 2014/15 was 42 students (5 higher than our norm). The average attrition rate among North American boarding schools is 15%, and LCS was at 15.4% during 2014/15.

Outdoor Education (OE) is a compulsory course at the Grade 9 level and an elective course at the Grade 10 and 11 levels. While many students choose to enrol in the Grade 10 and 11 elective OE courses, we have seen a slight decrease over the years in the number of students completing all three years of OE. This slight decrease has been driven by scheduling limitations to meet university prerequisite demands, particularly following the elimination of Grade 13.

In addition to our curricular OE program, there are also various additional opportunities for student participation in OE activities. For example, all Grade 12 students participate in the Algonquin Expedition and groups of students participate in the Irving and Ondaatje expeditions, dogsled expedition, overnight winter camping and a variety of other OE activities.

Our vision / key goals for the arts include plans to:

• Increase enrolment and participation in curricular and co-curricular arts programs
• Instil in our students a lifelong passion for the arts
• Expand the breadth of our arts programming to appeal to a wider range of interests
• Provide students with a wide array of supporting roles in productions to develop their skills and promote a sense of student ownership
• Foster positive relationships and increased connectedness with our external community
• Create a recruitment advantage for LCS 

We have made progress towards these goals. In addition to our regular offerings, we have launched new programming, including a new “love of music” theme in curricular and co-curricular music, promoting involvement at all skill levels; new student groups such as a Rock Choir, Ukulele Club and Drumming Club; and organized a new Remembrance Day Service format involving more than 40% of our students and all aspects of our arts program. We have deepened our connections to the local community, including increased use of local volunteer arts mentors for our students, expanded local advertising and promotion of our productions, an article in the Peterborough Examiner about our fall play that included student interviews and an interview of our student actors by CHEX TV. Our students have continued to take on important roles supporting our productions, including producing a promotional video and marquee.

We welcome faculty proposals for new course offerings. In addition, we seek regular feedback from our students on their interest in potential new programming in order to accommodate their evolving learning needs. Last year, we added two new courses related to the school’s values: a new physical education course tied to our Healthy, Caring Community value and a new environmental science course tied to our Environmental Stewardship value.

We do not currently have plans to increase our STEM course offerings.

The CAIS National Tracking Project, which tracks the post-secondary performance of Canadian independent school graduates, shows that the percentage of our students entering STEM disciplines, and their success in those areas, is very similar and in some cases better than other CAIS schools.

Our responsibility is to prepare our students for life in the 21st century and to help them develop as engaged, passionate and lifelong learners. We recognize that teaching through relationships is one of the cornerstones of the culture of LCS. We are committed to maintaining this focus with our faculty, and we also recognize that our teachers use a variety of different approaches to deeply engage students in learning. We will continue to support the progress our faculty members have made in all areas of their professional development and teaching practice. The Leadership Team does not plan in the near term to introduce any significant new changes to our teaching and learning model. Naturally, we want to allow our teachers to progress and grow in areas of interest to them. We recognize that there is no 'one size fits all' solution in teaching and learning, and we embrace diversity in our teachers.

Simply put, the 'flipped classroom' is a term widely used to describe almost any pedagogical structure that provides pre-recorded lectures followed by in-class exercises. The idea is to share the content before the lesson and, once in class, engage the students in various hands-on activities. LCS supports teachers in exploring innovative pedagogical methods to engage students, and the 'flipped classroom' is one of many such innovative approaches. As with most pedagogical approaches, different techniques work for different teachers, subjects and scenarios based on the context and the learners’ needs.

Over the past three years, we have implemented a variety of initiatives intended to instil a lifelong love of reading in our students. This has been achieved through Chapel read-alouds, student reading groups, holiday reading challenges, reading-themed displays in wall cases and the library, as well as by allowing students a degree of choice in their course reading based upon personal interests and ability. We have also launched a unique summer reading program involving online reading groups and “LCS staff picks.”

These programs have been highly successful in increasing student reading. Since 2012, our annual library book circulation has increased by 64%. At the same time, we have removed significant numbers of books from the library’s collection that were either out of date or redundant, creating a more focused collection that is engaging and relevant for our students.

Looking ahead, we believe that libraries need to be a place where creative problem-solving can happen with flexible, adaptable spaces both for independent and collaborative work. Teachers, library staff and others serve as facilitators to support the drive of the learner. Our goal is to transition our library to meet these emerging needs.

Our longstanding school motto is “a sound mind in a sound body,” and supporting students who experience mental health difficulties is integral to our Healthy, Caring Community Value.

This year, we added two new counsellors, bringing our total number of counsellors to three. These three dedicated professional counsellors are available to provide support to students. Should a staff member determine that a student should be assessed for counselling support by the Health Centre staff, or should a student desire such counselling, the student will undergo a preliminary Holistic Nursing Assessment conducted by one of our school nurses. This nurse will be the student’s Primary Care Nurse. The assessment will determine the level of counselling needed, and whether the student might most appropriately be helped through group support, one-on-one counselling or external psychological/psychiatric support. Parents are notified of the outcome of such an assessment.

In cases where a student experiences mental health difficulties that impede his or her ability to meet the demands of our school program, an individualized assessment of the student’s situation is undertaken, having regard to the best interests of the student as well as the community. Every reasonable effort is made to help accommodate the student’s needs.

Occasionally, a student in crisis may need immediate assessment and psychiatric support. In these instances, students are taken directly to the Peterborough Regional Health Centre, accompanied by one of our Health Centre staff, and parents are notified immediately.

Our small school size, family-like residences and strong student relationships forged by our staff position us better than many schools to identify students with mental health difficulties. Despite this, due to medical confidentiality and the vast range of mental health difficulties that can present, our staff may not be aware of a student’s mental health needs.

Future plans in terms of supporting students with mental health issues include: training all staff in Mental Health First Aid, implementing well-being practices with all students as a preventative measure against the onset of mental illness and implementing a positive psychology program (a proactive approach to focus on what makes people thrive and flourish) that allows our community to develop habits that promote well-being.

The world we live in is changing and security is top of mind for all schools – even in our small community in cottage country. The safety and security of students and staff is the school’s most important responsibility. As a result of these societal realities, over the past three years, and with the support of the Risk Management Committee of the school board, a number of security upgrades have been implemented. These included security cameras at all entrances to school buildings, more frequent lockdown drills and the hiring of additional security services when required. Given the trusting nature of the LCS community, these changes were a bit uncomfortable for us at first, but we understand their importance in the world we live in today.

Even with the steps we have taken in recent years, additional safety and security measures were recommended by the Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS) as part of its accreditation review of LCS during the spring of 2015, including access control measures (keypads on all the doors) and a full safety and security audit of the campus. We are working to implement these recommendations by the end of 2016. Additional measures may be necessary in the near future to ensure that our campus remains safe and secure.

The school has retained Aramark Corporation to provide food, laundry and housekeeping services. We have worked with Aramark for almost 20 years and have been very pleased with the services they provide. They began providing housekeeping services as of 2009. Aramark provides scheduling, work assignments, day-to-day oversight and staff management.

A new part-time Aramark employee has been added to assist with the additional workload resulting from the opening of Uplands House.

We have three long-serving LCS housekeepers who will remain direct employees of LCS until they retire. Upon their departure, Aramark will assume these responsibilities as part of their ongoing housekeeping contract and will hire the necessary replacements.

LCS is committed to posting all job openings internally first for current staff to consider. In situations where a position must be filled urgently, an internal and external posting may take place simultaneously; however, internal candidates would be considered first. Our newly created Board Human Resources Committee (HRC) will be reviewing these and other HR practices to identify any opportunities for improvement.

All new faculty are required to have their Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) designation. LCS does have a few long-serving faculty members who were hired before this policy came into effect and who do not have their OCT. For non-teaching or co-curricular positions (e.g., sports coaches, Heads of House, etc.), LCS may consider candidates who do not have their OCT.

With any change in leadership comes new expectations and practices that may result in changes to staffing structure and personnel.

We have a unique governance structure that was identified as a significant area of strength by CAIS in our recent accreditation review. The school and the foundation are separate legal entities that have their own distinct governance structures. The two distinct entities closely coordinate their activities to ensure alignment on strategic direction.

The school’s 75 trustees "guard the soul" of the institution, hold the trust of the founders, continue the school’s legacy, and promote the school’s mission and core values. Trustees elect the members of the Governance Committee.

The school board of directors, comprised of 16 members, is elected from the trustee group. The school board appoints various standing committees, including Finance & Audit and Risk Management. In addition, the school board now has ad hoc committees for Human Resources and the Executive Communications Committee. The board of directors provides governance and oversight to school leadership, led by the Head of School.

The foundation has its own body of 23 trustees. Foundation trustees elect members of the Foundation Governance Committee. The foundation board, which currently consists of five members, is elected from the foundation trustee group and appoints various standing committees, including the Fundraising Committee and the Finance, Audit & Investment Committee. The foundation board provides governance and oversight to the foundation’s management, led by its CEO.

Our governance structure provides for an Arbitration Panel in the event of disagreements between the school and foundation boards. There are also various joint committees of the school and foundation boards responsible for addressing matters of mutual importance to both entities such as the Strategic Planning, Finance and Performance Review Committees.

While our governance model possesses many advantages, its complexity and the number of stakeholders involved can prove challenging when attempting to respond to our constituents in an effective and timely manner. The board recently formed an ad hoc Executive Communications Committee comprised of members of the school and foundation boards and a representative from the school’s Leadership Team to assist us in this area going forward.

As stated above, the role of the school’s 75 trustees is to be “guardians of the soul" of The Grove. Individual school trustees served as members of various strategic planning committees, such as HR, Scheduling, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing and Fundraising. At each trustee meeting during the development of the plan, all school and foundation trustees were updated through multiple drafts and presentations of the plan as it evolved, and were consulted about the goals and strategies within that plan.

Both boards and trustee bodies were closely involved in the development of our strategic plan. The boards monitor progress on the strategic plan through regular updates at both board and trustee meetings, as well as annual reviews of key performance indicators (e.g., enrolment statistics, annual student and parent satisfaction surveys, fundraising and endowment growth, etc.). One of the board’s key learnings is that it must add an additional lens to its success measurement criteria, most important, ensuring that changes are aligned with the values and culture of the school, and that the community is comfortable with the pace and volume of that change.

The board was aware of the terminations in June and supported the Leadership Team's decision. Occasionally, organizations need to make difficult personnel decisions in order to provide the best educational and boarding experience for the students. One of the board’s learnings in light of recent months is that, in such instances, it needs more time to ask questions to better understand the impact of such changes on the school’s culture and ensure alignment with school values.

“Support” in this context refers to support for the leadership of Struan Robertson as Head of School, and means that both the school and foundation boards are satisfied with the manner in which LCS is being led by Struan and his Leadership Team. In making this assessment, the school board, in particular, considers a wide range of factors, including the state of the academic and co-curricular programs, enrolment management, the school's financial condition, the state of the physical plant, progress with the school's strategic plan and, most importantly, the safety and wellbeing of students, staff and faculty.

The board’s assessment is made through the job performance reviews of the Head of School which are conducted on an ongoing basis informally, and more formally semi-annually including a comprehensive year-end review that draws on feedback from students, faculty, staff, the Leadership Team, parents, and school and foundation board members.

The school and foundation bylaws are held by the Board Secretariat and are not currently made public. This is the first time we have had a request for our bylaws to be made public, and we have referred the issue to the school and foundation Governance Committees for their consideration.