Weekly Highlights 18/08/2023

Mr. Simon Higham, Principal

Dear Parents 

Welcome Back!

On behalf of all our school community, I would like to welcome both new and existing parents to a new school year at BVIS HCMC – we're excited to have you all part of our family and look forward to a great year of learning, success and opportunity. 

This is the first year that we have started a new academic term as a top 10 shortlisted school for innovation in the World’s Best School awards. In September, we will find out whether we have been shortlisted in the top 3 schools worldwide with overall winners announced in October and I will keep you updated with any further updates when I have them. 

We are all very proud of what we have achieved together so far! 

Updates and Upgrades   

As part of our ongoing strategic planning, we have been very busy over the summer break to ensure that our campus facilities are the very best that they can be to ensure enhanced student learning and wider opportunities to learn even more. I am pleased to report that all of the scheduled updates and upgrades to our campus have successfully been completed on time and to the highest standards.  

Here are some of our major projects: 

Our newly designed and upgraded EYFS outside play area, splash pool and changing facilities and overseas resources allow our youngest children within the school to develop their passions in learning.  

Year 1 to 3 Primary classrooms and Learning Together Rooms (LTRs) have been fully redesigned and refurnished to create more space and natural light when learning. This is the first phase of a 2 year project, with Year 4 to 6 being our next focus. 

Updated Music facilities across both Primary and Secondary have enabled larger learning and breakout spaces, together with additional storage areas to support our Juilliard Creative Curriculum and external peripatetic music programme, in collaboration with Aufdart.  

A total redesign and refurbishment of our Secondary Computer Science labs will allow greater mobility for learning, including the use of robotics in the curriculum. 

Updated lockers for Secondary students with no need to now bring in a padlock as all have integrated combination locks. 

 

Improved Learning Support and Training provision in Secondary, with individual and group workspaces and meeting rooms to give support for learning, if and when it is required.

Totally updated and redesigned changing facilities and an improved ventilation for the indoor swimming pool. 

A redesign and update to Gates B, C and E and improvements on how visitors sign in and out of the campus to further enhance the safety and security of the school.

Additionally, our whole school building, including all perimeter walls have been painted this summer and we hope you like the new look of the school. 

Mission, Vision and Values 

Over the next 3 weeks, I will be introducing you to our newly updated Mission, Vision and Values. 

Clearly defining who we are, what we do and how we do it is vitally important for a successful and forward thinking school like BVIS. By having a clear direction, our school culture can further strengthen and develop to ensure that every student who attends BVIS, receives the best education that we can possibly give. 

Visibility of our Mission, Vision and Values can be found in every classroom in the form of our aid memoire, which helps to remind us that this is the starting point for all learning. 

This week, please take time to read through our updated school Mission which explains the overall purpose of what we aim to achieve and how we will achieve this: 

At BVIS, our Mission is to deliver an outstanding international bilingual education for every BVIS child, that provides a learning experience like no other.   

We achieve our mission by:   

• providing a globally recognised international education 
• nurturing English and Vietnamese language proficiency across the whole school 
• protecting and celebrating Vietnamese culture, customs and traditions   
• fostering universal values such as personal integrity, respect for oneself and others and care for the local, wider and global community 
• embracing the ideals of equality, diversity and inclusion through everything we do  
• ensuring the entire school community practises positive well-being  
• enabling independent, collaborative and resilient learners   
• developing individual strengths, passions and leadership skills through a personalised approach to learning and teaching 

Please look out for this around the campus when you next visit and use the mission to ask your children questions about their everyday learning. 

Next week, I will introduce you to our school’s vision for the future – what we want to achieve and ultimately, how we plan to achieve this. 

Website – Parent Essentials 

For all essential information that you need to support your child at BVIS, click on the Parent Essentials section on the Homepage of our school website. 

Here you will find: 

• Key dates for the academic year 2023/24 
• Parent Handbooks to download 
• Monthly menus to help choose your child’s lunch 
• Information about how to order uniform 
• Presentations from previous parent seminars 

We hope you find this both useful and informative.

Contact Us

Should you require any help, support or advice, please do not hesitate to contact us using the information below: 

Safeguarding and Child Protection
Newly updated and improved 

For the academic year 2023/24, we have further improved our safeguarding provision and now have x6 members of our academic staff who make up our Safeguarding team – they are called our Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSL). 

The team is led by our Senior DSL, Ms Khuyen Tran. 

The health, safety and wellbeing of our students remains the number one priority at BVIS HCMC. 

Should you have a concern for the welfare of any child in our school, please refer to our Safeguarding poster below:  

Thank you for engaging and connecting with us through our Weekly Highlights and we wish you all the very best for another very successful year ahead.