I wish to thank you all for your contributions to our recent quinquennial (approximately once every 5 years) Parent Questionnaire. As mentioned, the information from this survey will now be processed by an independent educational consultant, RSAcademics, and fed back to focus groups, the Senior Leadership Team and Board of Governors at their next meeting. We hope that there will be clear opportunities identified that can then be built into the structure of the next SMUS Strategic Plan, due to run from January 2020 to 2030. The questionnaire forms just one component of what we believe to be the broadest-ever survey of a Canadian independent school. All faculty and staff have also been asked their views and opinions, as will be the majority of our Senior and Middle School students, together with representatives from our extended alumni community. The single aim of this extensive process has been to give everybody a voice with the purpose of providing an even better all-round education for our students.
I am also pleased to bring you up to date with another strategic reform which we believe will make life better and simpler for everybody. At present, each year all families go through the process of re-registering for the next academic year. For registrations for the 2019–20 school year, the deadline for re-registration is February 14, 2019.
In the future, we are planning to move to a process of continuous enrolment. This means that once you have enrolled your son or daughter at SMUS, he or she will be able to move seamlessly and continuously through the years without re-registration. Of course, it is your right to withdraw your child at any stage; this would simply be done by notifying our Admissions Office by a published date.
After consultation with other schools that have moved towards continuous enrolment, they talk about a great deal of time saved by parents and the school, increased efficiency and, perhaps more importantly, the reinforcement of a sense of both continuity and community. Rather than seeing the educational journey as a series of annual steps, we hope that this will encourage everybody to see schooling at SMUS as part of a smooth progression from Kindergarten to post-secondary.
I know that if you have any questions about the move to continuous enrolment in 2020, our Admissions team will be delighted to give you more detail.
