Weekly Highlights 05/09/2025

Weekly Highlights is a weekly newsletter sent by the BVIS Leadership Team to parents, providing updates on notable news and activities at the school. The newsletter consists of three main sections: updates from the Principal, Head of Primary, and Head of Secondary.

Dear Parents,

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful holiday weekend here in Vietnam, celebrating Vietnamese Independence Day. I had the pleasure of spending time in the city during the 4-day weekend, and it was lovely to see so many people enjoying the festivities.

Despite it being a short week, there has been a lot going on and the students across the school have been busy. Our Primary and Secondary highlights further on, shine a spotlight on what everyone has been up to. 

Online Safety Talk for Parents 

I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent workshop that is coming up for all parents in 2 weeks’ time.  Mr Jonathan Taylor will be visiting BVIS and working with staff, students and parents.  Jonathan is an accomplished and highly regarded Online Safety and Social Media Consultant, specialising in safeguarding children online and the methodologies used by offenders. He works extensively with schools, educational institutions, and child safeguarding organisations across the UK and internationally.  Jonathan provides expert advice and training on the development and implementation of online safety policies and awareness campaigns, with a particular focus on digital safety for students, parents, and staff.

All students from Year 5 onwards will work with Jonathan as will all staff. We encourage all parents to attend his workshop also. Please register via the QR code on the poster.

Meet Our New Teachers

We continue to introduce our new teachers.  We offer a warm welcome to Ms Cate and Mr Kapil who have both joined the school from the UK. Kapil is working as a Maths teacher in secondary while Cate is teaching Year 4 in primary.

Ms Cate Young

Cate graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in Education Studies from the University of Warwick. She then trained to teach through the rigorous Teach First programme through which she gained a PGDE in Primary Education from Bath Spa University. Cate taught for three years in a diverse, multicultural primary school in Bedford, gaining valuable experience in inclusive and responsive teaching. 
Outside of school, she enjoys live music, spending time with friends, and cooking.

Mr Kapil Saini

Having taught Mathematics and Computer Science across different secondary schools to a diverse range of age groups, Kapil is an experienced educator. Furthermore, Kapil has served as a lecturer in Further Education colleges in the UK. He is also an examiner for prominent examination boards. In his leisure time, he enjoys walking and playing cricket.

Friends of BVIS

Our Friends of BVIS will gather on the first Wednesday of each month going forward.  Meeting for coffee in the sunken garden, all parents are welcome to come along, say hello, catch up and meet new friends. I will be dropping in also and I hope this will be a great opportunity to meet with parents informally and get to know you.  

Contact Us

Should you wish to contact your child’s Class Teacher(s) or Form Tutor directly, we encourage communication to be written in the language you most feel confident to use. 

Parents may also find it useful to contact their child’s class teacher(s) or form tutor directly for all individual queries about their academic work/social and emotional wellbeing in school. Individual contact details can be found in the Parents’ Handbooks or via our Primary/Secondary Receptionists. 

Year 4 Entry Point

Inclusion Week

We look forward to next week’s first ever Inclusion Week in the Primary School where we celebrate all the things we do to ensure all our diverse community feel part of the school.

Through next week, all across the Primary and Early Years, we will be doing activities to highlight the importance of Inclusion and each day we have a theme (see below).

Digital Citizenship Introduced in Assemblies

ECAs (Clubs)

Buses

Please ensure you have communicated with the Bus Manager, Miss Ngoc (ngoc.tran@bvisvietnam.com), Miss Mai (mai.nguyen2@bvisvietnam.com) and your class teacher about how your child will be collected from their club on each day they have one so that children are collected at the correct time each day.

Upcoming Events

Maths Transition Project

At the end of the 2024–25 academic year, our Year 6 students embarked on an exciting Maths transition project by collecting data on their favourite smoothies. After voting for the top choice, they showcased their creativity by designing colourful stickers to match their drinks.

When the students returned in Year 7, the project continued in their Maths lessons, where they explored the nutritional content of smoothies and represented their findings using pie charts. To bring their learning to life, Year 7 collaborated with the Community Committee to host a smoothie sale for both primary and secondary students, raising almost 1 million VND for the Social Impact Fund. 

Special thanks go to Phung, Nguyen Thien Ngan (Ruby), Trinh, Ngoc Nhat Le and Nguyen, Tue Bao for their outstanding contributions, and to everyone who supported this project and helped make it such a success!

Pastoral Update - YouHQ Introduction

During last week’s assembly, we introduced YouHQ – a new wellbeing platform – to all Secondary School students.

After a successful trial in Dalat House last year, YouHQ is now available to every house to help support students with their personal and collective wellbeing.

Through the platform, students can easily request a pastoral check-in with a teacher and receive support when they need it most. We encourage you to remind your child to make use of this tool by completing the short wellbeing check-ins regularly and to reach out to us if they ever need to talk.

Sparx Maths Champions

The Sparx Maths Weekly Champion is the student who is the top XP earner in each year group.  
 
Students earn XP by completing tasks in their Sparx Homework 
  
Compulsory Tasks earn 60-80XP 
XP Boost Tasks earn 120-150XP 
Target Tasks earn 120-150XP 
Independent Learning Tasks earn 100XP 
  
Students reach a new Sparx Level every 10000XP 

Top XP earners this week are: 

Bedrock Champions

This week’s bedrock champions are:  

Year 7 Le Hong Minh Khue
Year 8 Nguyen Hoang Thuc Quyen
Year 9 Le Hong Minh Quang
Year 10 Kosuke Yamamura
Year 11 Tran Nhu Bao Thi
Year 12 Ngo Khanh Ngoc

Congratulations to all the above students who came up on top in their respective Year groups. A special well done to Mraz (Le Hong Minh Quang) who achieved the highest Bedrock points total across the whole of the secondary school this week!

Champion of the week!

This week’s champion is...

Congratulations and well-done to Wilson!

Champion Tutor Group of the week!

This week’s Champion tutor group is 

Congratulations to 789v/Hanoi4. Well done!

Housepoint Totals

Congratulation to Saigon house, who hold on to top spot!

Upcoming events

8/9 – ECA Block 1 Begins
17/9 – Jonathan Taylor Visit
18/9 – Year 11 Options Event
25/9 – Year 9 Options Event
25/9 – UGC Coffee Morning
30/9 – University Fair

Child Protection

The health, safety and wellbeing of our students remain 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: