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Our Key Stage 3 students did a great job in reflecting and creating solutions to local and global problems using an inquiry based approach.

We have finished the first ever Mock Exam week for both our year 11 and our first ever graduating class, year 13´s. As I was pondering what to write for my blog I was drawn to what was the core message I wanted to convey at the end of a very significant moment in the short life of BCB.

Three of our secondary students won this year’s Global Campus Creative Writing Competition. This is an outstanding achievement as their writing was judged against possible entrants from 69 schools across 29 countries.

Dear Parents, We have had a couple of extremely successful weeks with our students who have engaged with the Nord Anglia Global Campus activities. Five BCB students have been recognised globally by not only Nord Anglia, but two experts in their fields.

Today, our lives are far more convenient and easy, with everything we need at our fingertips. The world of computers is growing at an un-recordable rate everyday, and needless to say that computers are the most influential tools in our lives, they are our present and future. We also need to remember at the same time that what we have today is the culmination of hundreds of years of scientific progress and breakthrough. “Inventions such as the Internet and mobile phones have changed the world forever”, I am sure we all agree with this statement and experience the same in our day-to-day living.

In April of last year, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary did something unusual.In April, and again in July, the dictionary’s editors released special updates, citing a need to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the English language.  Some of the new inclusions were based on the language of quarantine; such as social-distance, shielding and self-isolate, others based on new social experiences such as elbow-bump (a safe way of greeting people),  zoombombing (which is when strangers intrude on video conferences), doomscrolling (which happens when you skim anxiety-inducing pandemic-related stories on your smartphone) and more globally, my personal favourite,  the German term “hamsterkauf” (literal translation ‘buying hamsters) as a way of describing panic buying. Whether such terms will be in common usage after the pandemic is anyone’s guess.

Dear Parents, Hopefully today we can help clarify some of the current organisation and decisions made. We are only reporting on the situation today as we don’t want to add confusion. Changes, calls for feedback, and future changes will be communicated at the necessary time.

Let’s face it. The art of persuasion and rhetoric has helped to build local communities, cities and empires. We can celebrate the great orators of ancient Greece and Rome for crafting the skill that has stood the test of time for over two thousand years. Many modern day politicians still look back to some of the classical greats for inspiration to stir up crowds and nations in times of both peace and war.

One of BCB students' MIT project has been selected to be part of the MIT reaction video.

Despite challenging conditions, students on the IGCSE and IBDP - Geography curriculum, found their fieldtrip to the River Paraitinga a rewarding experience.

As teachers, we try to know all of our students as well as possible: we try to understand how they work and feel and then we use this to help them achieve their very best.

We at the MFL department have reinforced the importance of reading for students. Recently, each year group participated in reading projects that, despite the varied proposals, have as a common objective the academic role of students, as well as (providing) a repertoire of life, experiences, possibilities, exchanges and discoveries about themselves and the world around you.

Dear Parents, I am delighted to write with the updated plan for operations from 1st February. The health and safety protocols will continue as before, temperature checking at the gate, wearing of masks, shields for staff, hand sanitizer all around the school, regular hand washing, and a distance maintained of 1.5M between people. We have been operating safely with the 20% extracurricular activities for some time now and are confident with movements in, around, and out of school. This message is to outline your children’s attendance.

During this term, our secondary students have been invited to take part in the first STEAM challenge of this academic year. The challenge for this term is called "Into the void - Living in Space" - our students had the opportunity to interact with MIT experts who work at the International Space Station.

Dear Parents, We have finally arrived at the end of our first term together. As I discussed with the PTA earlier this week, this is now the opportunity to have a complete rest with your families, no waking up and getting your children online, no worries about internet connection or technology, no multiple trips to school for the extracurricular learning.

Dear Parents, Today for Primary and next week for Secondary, you will receive this term’s reports for your children. As parents you eagerly await these to celebrate your child's success and also to support them in their stage of learning. Whether you are in your first term of school or about to take vital exams, we want to know that we are on the correct track. Academic outcomes are extremely important, and we do put an emphasis on these, but what I think is vital is the attitude to learning. Children with a positive attitude and growth mindset are going to do the best they can in the future. These features are reported in Secondary with a 1-4 scale and in Primary with their stage on the learner league. Please do celebrate these aspects with your children.

Whether you play the violin, drums or sing - if you're a musician, we would like to encourage you to select, prepare and enter a performance for the Nord Anglia Education Virtual Musician of the Year 2021 competition.

Studying the arts online can be challenging but our students have been engaging in lots of creative activities.

Dear Parents, Each year all Nord Anglia schools around the globe survey their parents to gain valuable feedback. As a new Principal this is a fantastic opportunity to gain your views in a completely anonymous way. For a school and community to work as well as we can together, we need valuable feedback. For example, we may think we are communicating effectively but that may not be your perception. If we don’t talk to each other honestly and openly, then we might be targeting our communications in the wrong way. This is just one very simple example, and I do hope that you have felt communication has improved since I started at the school. However, I am always open for things to improve.