Head of Community Engagement

**Position Objective**

Reporting to the Managing Director - Operations, the Head of Community Engagement is responsible for providing an exceptional community and customer experience that drives retention of students and increased advocacy of the school. The position is the link between the school and the community where we build trust, support, and open dialogue between community members and the school.

The Head of Community Engagement shares our company’s vision & objective while providing customer service excellence for the community.

They will provide a platform to ‘delight’ our school community through exceptional customer engagement and experience through efficient processes and diverse opportunities to continue to promote advocacy for the school.

**Responsibilities**

**The job holder’s responsibility for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young person’s for whom they are responsible, or with whom they come into contact will be to adhered to and ensure compliance with the relevant Cognita Safeguarding; Child Protection Policy and Procedures at all times. If in the course of carrying out the duties of the role, the job holder identifies any instance that a child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm either at school or at home, they must report any concerns to the School’s Designated Safeguarding Lead or to the Head or indeed to the Cognita Regional Safeguarding Manager so that a referral can be made accordingly to the relevant third party services.**

**Retention and Parent Satisfaction**
- Design and facilitate a strategic plan to help increase retention within school through greater community engagement and reduce withdrawals.
- Design and facilitate initiatives that develop and foster relationships within our parent community and deliver parent satisfaction at its maximum, ensuring excellence in delivering best customer experience to our students and their families.
- Engage the academic teams in retention initiatives.
- Build and maintain relationships with PTA and the country ambassadors to meet cultural and community needs. Provide them support for their events and managing the community chats.
- Facilitate transition from grade to grade and grade level connection opportunities throughout the year. More specifically, focus on critical transition years from KG2, G5 and G8.
- Ownership and management of the Voice of the Parent annual survey
- Roll out
- Analysis
- Outreach and follow up
- Reporting to key leadership groups.
- Creates opportunities for feedback collection and management of responses.
- Manages feedback and oversees internal & external customer issues to ensure effective and long-term problem resolution. Receives (directly or through forwarding) and handles all queries and feedback from parents; forwards academic queries to the Superintendent or Principals and manages operational feedback.
- Sets performance standards to meet service goals of the school and the department.
- Provides feedback and reporting the company’s various departments regarding service improvements or customer concerns.
- Always acting and responding to customer issues and/or inquiries in a professional and effective manner.
- Assists with periodic review of the end-to-end customer journey to identify specific touch points on service improvements that contribute to overall customer experience.
- Supports internal stakeholders on tactical follow-ups.
- Initiates prompt and positive action on all feedback, questions, concerns, and suggestions, as well as conduct quality assurance follow-up; respond to inquiries regarding services and school related issues.
- Resolves challenging situations in a professional manner and accurately communicates pertinent information to support a customer service culture; escalates to appropriate party as required.
- Mediates with responsible internal and external service providers e.g. bus company, catering, CCA staff, until resolution is achieved and keeps parents engaged during the process until the final outcome and/or resolution is reached.
- Projects an approachable and professional image in communication style, demeanor and presentation.
- Leverages the support of the Community Engagement team for communication with parents where necessary.
- Works with the communications team to communicate to all parents/groups of parents any operations news/notifications. Works with the communications team to provide comprehensive support, information, and introduction to parents around school systems, campus facilities and events.

**Withdrawals**
- Processing of all withdrawals in Dynamics that have been submitted from parents and school leadership, including confirmation with families.
- Annually review the withdrawal process to ensure it is meeting parent and school needs.
- Managing the leavers feedback and reasons for departure, and more specifically follow-ups with on-island leavers.
- Reporting of known leavers weekly to relevant stakeholders.
-