Welcome Back | Looking forward to a great new academic year
Welcome Back | Looking forward to a great new academic year
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the 2016 / 17 academic year. I’d like especially to welcome the new principals and teachers who have joined our family this year.
Click below to watch my welcome back message:
Yet again our academic results are a source of great pride to us all. Thanks to the expertise and hard work of our teachers and all school staff, our students have achieved high scores across all the examinations sat this summer. From the IB Diploma to A-levels, to the French Baccalaureate in Switzerland and the Advanced Placement in the US, and finally with the recent release of the GCSE/IGCSEs results, we have beaten national and global averages once again. These high scores ensure our students go on to be successful in whatever they choose to pursue in the next phase of their lives: whether that is through access to elite universities around the world, employment or travel, we are confident that our students are prepared to follow their dreams. Click on this link to find out the detail behind these outstanding results achieved across our family.
Also please see below, a top line summary of our research into the impact of our performing arts collaboration with Juilliard one year on. As you will see, whilst we are still in the early days of our collaboration, the results are extremely encouraging. Students and teachers have reported significant uplifts in motivation as well as building transferable skills. This reinforces the purpose of our collaboration: preparing students for the world stage. Click on this link to read the top line summary of the impact of our performing arts collaboration with Juilliard one year on.
This will be another exciting year of growth for Nord Anglia Education. Many of our schools have upgraded and expanded their facilities over the summer months. We have grown to the 'Power of 43' with the addition of new campuses for the British International School of Houston and the Nord Anglia Chinese International School Shanghai.
Our collaborations with world leading educators are going from strength to strength. This year 38 of our schools will benefit from our Juilliard collaboration. In addition, 13 of our schools have sent students and teachers to MIT for STEAM workshops this year. They will also be participating in a series of STEAM challenges devised by MIT in the term ahead. I’m also pleased to announce that 50 of our colleagues will begin their Executive Master’s in International Education at King’s College London. As a result of these initiatives, we are proud to say that our students and teachers continue to learn from the best.
I am pleased to share my recent article published by the Huffington Post on the benefits of outdoor learning, titled “Why Pokémon Go Points the Way Forward for Educators.” This article not only highlights the importance of outdoor experiential learning in a well-round curriculum, but also puts a spotlight on our expeditions and in-school activities which supports this belief. In the article, we cite our expeditions to Tanzania and Switzerland as well as school gardens that we know many Nord Anglia schools have introduced as an outdoor activity.
You will soon be receiving (or may have already received) a 'back to school' notebook, a gift from Nord Anglia. The notebook contains information on what makes us stronger as a family of schools including our shared vision, goal and philosophy. I hope that you find it useful.
I would like to wish you all the best for this academic year.
Kind regards,
Andrew
Andrew Fitzmaurice
CEO
