Letter from the Principal: Start of Term 1

We welcome back all our students, staff and families for another eventful year at DCIS

Dear DCIS Parents and Guardians,

It was wonderful to see so many of our families on Orientation Day and it was fantastic to have children back on campus. I hope you had an opportunity to see the various improvements we have made over the summer.

You may have noticed the displays in Cooper Hall for the new DCIS Houses. After extensive collaboration with students across the school, we agreed on using areas of Singapore for our new houses. All children and staff will be placed in houses so we can compete in sporting and non sporting competitions through the year.

DCA Class Parents are needed for classes across the school, so we have created an online survey to recruit volunteers for this critical role in our school. If you are interested in becoming a Class Parent, please take our survey or contact dca@dovercourt.edu.sg.

If parents did not get an opportunity to meet your child's new teacher or you would like more information on the teachers, then you can find photos and profiles of all our staff on the website or app. We have two new positions this year, a swimming coach to help the PE team develop our swimming programme and a counsellor to further support our Educational Psychologist and teachers to enable the correct support arrangements for all our students. 

The website and app also have details on a number of new Secondary School staff who joined us this year to help us launch the new IB programme. The IB students have already met with Mr. O’Shea, our new IB Diploma Programme Coordinator. They also saw the new base we have built for them that is a bespoke teaching space as well as giving them an area to relax in away from the hard work of the IB Diploma Programme.

By now you will have already received the information on how to log on to the new portal our catering partners are using. We are very confident that the system will work extremely well both for pre-orders for Primary School children and A la Carte for our Secondary School students. If you do experience any issues adding money to your account or making pre-orders please be reassured that we will make sure that students are fed if they haven’t brought lunches in from home. We will also be allowing cash payments in the cafeterias until 28^th September.

As already mentioned we are moving to photo ID cards for parents, guardians and helpers on site. Unfortunately the production of this has been delayed. We will have this in place by the end of September. In the meantime please sign in as normal after drop off time. If you don’t have an old temporary parent pass you will be issued with a visitor badge. You will have noticed the swing gates on the road up to Block E. These will close at 8.30am each morning so please drop off at the main entrance after this time and make sure your child registers with reception if they are late.

We wish all our families an excellent start to Term 1 and look forward to a new academic year.

Best wishes,

Mr. Christopher Short
DCIS Principal