Report Summaries

2021-2024 Aoba Strategic Plan Review Report June 2021

Introduction

The school’s strategic plan was approved by the AJIS Board in November 2020. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated significant adjustments to the school’s normal operations and communication with the school community. The timeline below listing the major adjustments clearly demonstrates the school’s agility to respond through educational innovation.

Timeline

January	2020	WHO reports COVID 19
February	2020	AJIS moves to full online learning within a day of the Tokyo SoE
June/July	2020	AJIS online Summer session, utilising majority of staff
August to December	2020	AJIS F2F and online school blend
January to June	2021	AJIS Extended F2F and online school blend

The COVID disruption meant that the school focussed on supporting the whole school community to effectively engage in online learning. Unwittingly, the 3 year collaborative project between Southern Cross University and the school enabled the school’s workforce to respond to the COVID challenge. We were able to transition from Face to Face on-site learning to fully online overnight. Our survey data shows the school maintained teaching and learning expectations, a positive school climate, parent satisfaction and student achievement during this disruptive period.

Report Structure

The report reviews the two key strategic areas:

Education consists of 3 Strategic Objectives and 8 Goals.
Business consists of 4 Strategic Objectives and 8 Goals.

This report rates the progress of each objective, goal, and strategy as No Progress (N), Ongoing (O), and Achieved (A). As can be seen from the chart that follows the School has achieved slightly more than one-third of the strategy strands as of June 2021. Just over half are ongoing, and one-eighth show no progress.

Future Strategic Focus

The school will continue to implement the ongoing strategic goals. Listed below are the key goals the school focus on achieving in 2021-2022.

Note: Appendix 8 provides an overview of the Strategic Plan Review.

Strategic Area: Education Objectives, Goals and Strategies
Objective E1: Learning Outcomes – Deliver exceptional learning outcomes for all students
Develop a common A-JIS / AJB framework and benchmarks to determine admissions into K-G1.
Objective E2: Professional Capacity – Support professional thinking, practice and collaboration to ensure educational impact.
● Enact the three-year professional inquiry program utilising the SCU project content.
● Develop and implement an integrated Blended Learning Platform at A-JIS with Canvas
● Develop teacher capability to produce digital resources by applying EBL and product development principles in the teacher professional development over 3 years.
Objective E3: Outreach – Deepen partnerships within and beyond the community.
● Develop network marketing materials explaining partners..
● Build formal relations with benchmark schools, using outcomes from our identity review.
Strategic Area: Business Objectives, Goals and Strategies
Objective B3: Growth – Ensure support for future projects and organisation expansion through school growth and enrolment growth.
● Use outcomes from the joint evaluation report to develop key messages; brand specifications; standards for marketing activities and assets.
● Open 2 new AJIS Schools in Japan.
Objective B4: Accountability – Ensure that operations are sustainable and run effectively
● Allocate a full-time finance officer to coordinate budget development and management.

Audit Reports

Summary of Internal Audit Plan

Audit Type

Internal control audit based on the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (J-SOX) ⇒ Cooperation

with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC . Basis: Article 24-4-4 of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act from

October to December 2020: Content Internal control over business processes including,

Account Management, General Affairs, Human Resources and Financial Reporting

January to March 2021: Internal control over AJIS business processes including order flow and labor cost.
April to May 2021: Content Internal control related to IT, Order Management, Account Management.
May 2021 Content (Full year) Internal control over financial reporting

Audit Type

Internal control audit based on the Companies Act: Conducted by the Internal Audit Office (in the presence of Audit & Supervisory Board Members). Based on Article 362, Paragraph 4, Item 6 of the Companies Act / Article 100 of the Enforcement Regulations of the Companies Act

October to December 2020: Content Labor management (personnel), Impact of the new coronavirus infection and countermeasures, Workflow application status, Business risk management system, Impacts of ITization of business and countermeasures, Privacy Mark compliance, Status of AJIS’s business, business problems and countermeasures and Subsidiary management

Summary of Audit Report

Board of Directors: December 2020, May and June 2021.

Report on the Results of Internal Audits by the Internal Audit Office for the 23rd Fiscal Year

May 11, 2021 Internal Audit Office. The following is a summary report on the results of internal audits conducted by the Internal Audit Office for the 23rd fiscal year.

Based on the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (Article 24-4-4) conducted from August 2020 to March 2021 no problems were found.
Based on the Companies Act (Article 362, Paragraph 4, Item 6 / Enforcement Regulations, Article 100) conducted from October to December 2020 no problems were found.
Based on the internal control as required by the Companies Act found no problems at all.

Financial Report

During the 2020 fiscal year, A-JIS achieved 1.4 billion JPY total revenue due to increase in enrollment. In addition to the initial fees of 7 percent, tuition-related fees including facilities fee, comprised 83 percent of total revenues. In total, enrollment-related income constitutes 90 percent of total revenues. Other revenues such as lunch, school bus and after school activities accounted for 6 percent, which is less than the previous years due countermeasures against the COVID pandemic.

In our efforts to provide high-quality education, A-JIS has employed 83 teachers (student-teacher ratio 6.9) for homeroom, EAL, special subjects, learning support and others. Salaries and benefits represented 70 percent of total cost of sales which contributed to hiring and training professional and experienced teachers.

Investment in education and the school environment including educational material purchases, professional development, membership fees, rent and leases, accounted for 29 percent. This includes a large investment in the renovation of the first floor at Hikarigaoka Campus.