Our various systems have been refined over the last few years and are now very robust and whilst the start of the year has not been without a few minor glitches, it has been generally a very smooth opening few weeks after the trials of the flooding which we endured in Huacao on the first day of term.
The warm welcome provided by the staff, existing students and their families and by the PTA culminated in the PTA Welcome Back Party on Saturday evening. The front courtyard was transformed into a picnic and party area and well over a thousand people came together to celebrate the start of the school year. It was a hugely successful and enjoyable event. The warm welcome does not of course end there and in fact after Golden Week we will have a further dozen new students and families joining us, just to remind us that this is an important on-going process.
There have a been a number of high profile exciting experiences with the IA Gold Award trip, the first swimming meeting of the year and the cricket coaching clinic led by the former England captain Mike Gatting, which has launched the development of BISS Puxi as a cricket hub on the Puxi side of the city. More importantly, day in and day out the students have been doing exciting and challenging things in the classroom and a lot of hard work essential for academic and extra-curricular success later in the year has been taking place. The cast of the senior play, The Threepenny Opera which will be performed downtown at the historic Pearl Theatre as well as at BISS Puxi in March 2016 and the cast of the KS3 production “Fools Gold” are all in rehearsal.
In some ways the break we have next week is a little early but we have no choice due to the Chinese public holidays. The good news is that Shanghai normally enjoys good weather at this time of year and the break also gives families a chance to take advantage of the many travel options in China and the rest of the Far East.
The month of October promises to be equally exciting and industrious at school with the usual combination of visits, fixtures and events; most notably the visit of our Juilliard Visiting Artist Andrea Lee and other expert Juilliard colleagues who will be running a series of workshops and master classes at BISS Puxi. We also have the second big PTA event of the year, the PTA Ball on Saturday 17 Oct which promises to be a sparkling affair.
I hope you all have a relaxing and peaceful Golden Week holiday.
Kevin Foyle, Principal