Christel House Nepal seeks an exceptional educational leader to serve as the Founding Principal of our school. This is a founding role: you will join the organisation before the school opens, help build the academic programme from the ground up, and lead all aspects of teaching, learning, and school culture from Day 1.
The Founding Principal is the instructional leader of the school. You will be the instructional leader of the school, ensuring the delivery of a high-quality program in the areas of academics and character development. Reporting to the CEO, you will lead on the design and implementation of the programmatic strategy by selecting and adopting high-quality instructional materials, building systems and processes to ensure every student has high quality instruction.
Visionary Instructional Leadership
- Create, communicate, and inspire others around a clear and compelling academic vision aligned with Christel House's mission, core values, and the needs of students and families.
- Lead from proximity: be present in classrooms every week - not as an observer passing through, but as an instructional leader who knows exactly what is happening in every room and what it means for every child
- Foster a school culture where excellence is the standard and growth is the expectation - where staff and students alike understand that effort is the pathway to achievement, and where falling short is named honestly and addressed directly
- Stay abreast of the latest developments in education, including proficient use of current technology, AI, and other innovative instructional methods relevant to the Nepali context
Programmatic Expertise
- Map the Christel House curriculum to Nepal's National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and implement it at a high level, adapted to meet the learning levels and needs of all students
- Draw down from evidence-based, high-quality instructional and curricular materials (i.e. International Baccalaureate or Cambridge) to ensure CH Nepal students experience the best of global instructional practices
- Ensure classroom instruction is objective-driven, rigorous, and engaging for all learners, including students entering from government or community school backgrounds
- Maintain a safe, orderly, and consistent learning environment with clear behaviour management systems embedded in the daily life of the school
- Create an inclusive, engaging, and culturally responsive environment for staff and students that honours the diversity of the communities we serve.
Strategic Planning and Execution
- Lead the development of the academic programme before the school opens: curriculum mapping, scope and sequence, assessment systems, school schedule, and classroom environment standards
- Set clear annual priorities and craft implementation plans with monitoring systems to ensure goals are achieved and progress is tracked honestly
- Maximise educational outcomes through strategic scheduling and efficient resource management, ensuring that the extended school day delivers on all four pillars of the Christel House model
- When something is not working, name it early and change course - do not wait for a problem to resolve itself, and do not protect a plan at the expense of the children it was designed to serve
Talent Management and Development
- Supervise, lead and motivate the programmatic staff
- Work closely with the CEO to lead teacher recruitment and selection, designing criteria and assessing candidates to build a high-performing academic team
- Design and deliver a pre-service induction programme that grounds teachers in the Christel House model, its values, and its non-negotiables before the first student arrives
- Provide goal-based teacher coaching through regular classroom observation, structured feedback conversations, practice, and real-time coaching - the measure of your leadership is not your own performance, but what changes in the teachers around you
- Deliver feedback that is honest, specific, and warm enough that teachers want to act on it: hold the standard and invest in the person at the same time, because children need leaders who can do both
- Implement robust performance management including strategic hiring, onboarding, feedback, and evaluation processes; do not lower the standard to protect the relationship - the children in this school do not have a spare year for things to improve eventually
Data-Driven Decision-Making
- Establish baseline assessments at school entry to understand where each child is starting from, and use those baselines as the foundation for every goal, every intervention, and every evaluation of progress - measure before concluding, and establish baselines before setting targets
- Review student work with teachers to evaluate instructional effectiveness and identify areas for improvement
- Use data to systematically identify and support students through targeted interventions, and lead data conversations with teachers that move from numbers to specific action
- Report on academic outcomes to the Country Leader and to Christel House International - including findings that are worse than hoped. A progress report that skips the hard findings is not a progress report
Holistic Model Leadership
- Understand and implement the full Christel House model: the extended school day serves the whole child, and the character and leadership, health, and social services pillars are as central to the model as academic instruction
- Partner with the Head of Social Services to ensure that student wellbeing, family circumstances, and social-emotional needs are addressed as integral to academic success - not as someone else's responsibility that runs alongside yours
- Integrate character and leadership development into the daily life of the school - in how teachers engage with students, how assemblies are structured, how conflicts are handled, and how student growth is recognised
- Treat family engagement as a genuine partnership: Parent Committees are a governance requirement from Day 1, and strong family relationships are one of the most powerful levers for student achievement
People Management and Change Leadership
- Communicate effectively across contexts and maintain transparent, frequent communication with all stakeholders: teachers, families, the Country Leader, and Christel House International
- Own problems rather than attribute them: when something goes wrong, the question is not whose fault it is, but what we do next - this is especially true when a problem crosses team boundaries
- Build credibility through dependability, integrity, and consistent follow-through on commitments
- Develop strong relationships across all school constituencies and leverage them to achieve shared goals
- Engage actively with Christel House International's quality assurance processes - including school audits, collaborative network visits, and Peer Review - and be honest with CHI even when it is uncomfortable; the trust that makes the network valuable depends on it
