Building a school from scratch means recruitment begins with a strategy, not a vacancy.
This requires a different kind of support from a school recruiter. The decisions made 18 to 24 months before opening will shape the school for years to come. From its culture and leadership to its ability to attract and retain the right people. You cannot rush this part. It requires genuine advisory input from the outset.
Foundation planning before recruitment
A founding school must answer some fundamental questions before it writes a single brief.
What is the age range and curriculum?
What does the growth trajectory look like over the first three to five years?
How many students are expected in year one, and what does that mean for staffing numbers?
The answers to those questions determine everything else. The organisational structure, the number of roles required, the sequencing of appointments, and the budget needed to make it happen. Recruitment without that foundation is guesswork.
Once you have answers to these questions, the next steps are to draft a basic organisational chart. An organisational chart maps staff roles, reporting lines, and decision-making structures at a glance. Next, identify key leadership and operational roles, and outline a realistic recruitment timeline leading up to opening. Define job descriptions for critical positions and map out hiring appointment dates. These practical actions lay the groundwork for a focused and effective recruitment process.
Salary benchmarking & market intelligence
Salary benchmarking sits at this stage too, before making offers. Schools need to understand what competitive packages look like in their region before going to market. Base salary, housing allowance, flights, healthcare, school places, and end-of-service benefits all form part of that picture. Getting this wrong at the offer stage is an expensive mistake. Founders should use regional salary surveys, international school associations, and specialist school recruiters to inform their benchmarking. These tools provide valuable data and practical starting points to inform your approach.
The head of school appointment changes everything
The first appointment a founding school makes is the most consequential one. The Head of School will shape the culture and influence every subsequent hire. The Head sets the tone for how the school operates from day one. This is not a role to fill quickly.
The right candidate needs international school experience, ideally with some familiarity with the country or region. Start-up experience is a significant advantage. Leading an established school and launching one from scratch requires different skills and a different temperament. Leadership style matters as much as credentials. How they work with a board or owner, how they build a team and how they handle uncertainty. These are the things a CV cannot tell you.
Appoint the Head of School at least 18 months before opening – everything else follows from that.
Sequencing leadership before teaching staff
Once the Head of School is in place, senior leadership recruitment can begin for both academic and non-academic staff. Bring HR managers, marketing and admissions leads on board early. This allows schools to establish a clear recruitment process before teacher hiring begins. Following this, heads of primary and secondary schools, and a business or operations manager. Complete these appointments before teacher recruitment starts in earnest.
The reason is straightforward. Teachers will want to know what they are joining. Schools should have a clear identity, a defined curriculum, and a leadership team in place before teacher recruitment begins. Recruiting staff before that structure is in place increases the risk of early attrition.
Safeguarding from the start
Established schools develop their safeguarding processes gradually over time. Founding schools need to have these processes in place before a single student arrives. Founders should look to recognised international safeguarding standards and frameworks, such as those from COBIS or BSO, as a guide for their processes. That means designated safeguarding leads are identified and trained according to best practice. Reporting structures should be agreed in line with established frameworks. Staff should be able to understand not just the policy but what it looks like in practice.
Schools should assess safeguarding competence at every stage of the recruitment process. Not as a formality, but as a genuine evaluation. The best founding schools and reputable school recruiters treat it as a leadership question, not a compliance one. If safeguarding is an afterthought in recruitment, it will be an afterthought in the school.
Compensation that reflects the reality of the move
Attracting strong candidates to a founding school requires an honest conversation about the package on offer. Educators considering a move to a new country and into a school that does not yet exist are taking a significant leap of faith. The compensation needs to reflect that.
Beyond salary, candidates will want to understand housing arrangements, flight provisions, healthcare coverage, and whether school places are available for their children. These are not peripheral questions — for many candidates, they are the deciding factor. Schools that have not worked through these details before going to market will lose good people to schools that have.
Common recruitment challenges to prepare for
Founding schools face predictable recruitment challenges: a limited candidate pool in the early stages, longer-than-expected visa processing timelines. Cultural adaptation for staff arriving from the UK or Ireland, and package expectations that schools have not properly benchmarked. None of these is insurmountable, but all require early planning and an experienced school recruiter to manage effectively. There are practical steps leaders can take: start the visa process as early as possible to avoid delays. Broaden the recruitment search to include candidates from a wider range of backgrounds. Provide cultural orientation and support to help new staff settle quickly, and use external benchmarks to ensure salary packages are competitive. Addressing these challenges proactively helps minimise risk and sets the school up for a smoother launch.
Last-minute drop-outs are more common than schools expect, and the consequences for a founding school are particularly acute. A senior leader withdrawing after accepting an offer, weeks before opening, can destabilise an entire staffing plan. The best protection against this is time. Starting the recruitment process early enough to build a buffer means that if a candidate withdraws, there is still a realistic window to appoint someone of the right calibre before the school opens.
Working with a reputable and experienced school recruiter in new and founding schools also helps. A recruiter with an established pipeline of pre-screened candidates can respond quickly when a late withdrawal happens. This avoids starting the search from scratch at the worst possible moment. Schools that run recruitment entirely in-house or through open platforms rarely have the candidate relationships needed to respond at speed.
What chk Education brings to founding schools
chk Education has supported six founding schools through their initial recruitment. We use that experience to guide strategic planning conversations. From sequencing leadership appointments and benchmarking packages against the market, to embedding safeguarding structurally from the start. In addition to recruitment, chk Education also offers ongoing support to founding schools. This includes advisory services for onboarding and induction, guidance on building internal HR processes, and continued consultation as the school grows in its first years. Through initial and ongoing advice, chk Education helps founding schools build the foundations for long-term success.
Empower Your New School to Succeed from Day One
Founding school recruitment is advisory work as much as it is search work. The schools we have supported have not just filled roles — they have built teams with the clarity of purpose and foundations that last beyond the first year. That kind of support starts long before a vacancy exists. If you are in the planning stages, the right time to start that conversation is now. Let chk Education guide you through every step of your journey to build a thriving school.
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