Head’s Lines: Forging ahead with new partnerships & collaborations

Welcome back to the second half of Term 2. I hope everyone has had a great half term break and is ready for a very busy next six weeks. To start this half term, our Year 5 children go with their teachers and teaching assistants on their annual week long residential to Petchburi where they will be undertaking a whole range of outdoor educational experiences which I am sure they will find both challenging and very enjoyable. I hope they all have a very good week.

School Partnership Project  

A message from  Dr Kaanwarin Polanunt

It was a great honour and privilege to lead the team of St Andrews International School Bangkok which included Mr Paul Schofield, Kroo Kitty, Khun Bee and Khun Pam on a visit Doi Tung in Chiang Rai on 14 and 15  February. Myself, Mr Paul and the team received an invitation to join a special dinner event hosted by the Mae Fah Luang Foundation under Royal Patronage and were presented to Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn on the evening of 14 February in the Mae Fah Luang Garden. On the afternoon of 15 February, the St Andrews team visited Ban Huayraisamakkee School. Mr Paul and I had the opportunity to report to HRH Princess Sirindhorn in the meeting on the partnership with Mae Fah Luang Foundation to seek to support the school quality development of Anuban Mae Fah Luang and Ban Huayraisamakkee Schools. Other partners including TRUE supporting information technology, Siam Commercial Bank supporting health and sanitation and Thai Bev supporting students’ job skills. STA is supporting the school management, the curriculum development and the teacher professional development focusing on project-based teaching and learning. My report to the Princess included a workshop seminar on developing topic-based curriculum and project-based learning provided to 38 Grades 4 – 6 teachers and school administrators from eight schools in the areas of Doi Tung development project on 1 – 2 February. The best practices of STA on a topic-based teaching approach and several samples of project-based learning activities were shared to those participants.

STA is very proud to be taking part in supporting the educational development of the local community through our partnership with Mae Fah Luang Foundation. It is a long-term development project that we expect will have a lasting impact on the quality of Thai schooling.

NAE  Senior Leadership Course

There is plenty of excitement at the onset of this half term as St Andrews hosts three special events. This week we will be welcoming 50 prospective senior leaders and course organisers from other Nord Anglia Education schools to our High School campus as we are hosting for the NAE Senior Leadership Course. It will be a very hard working few days from Wednesday to Friday for the course leaders and delegates and I know they will enjoy the environment at our school and the planned programme they will be undertaking.

Marlin Mayhem

Next weekend our school will host our Marlin Mayhem swim meet at the High School campus. There will be a great two days of competition with over 10 other international schools taking part. This has been a great event in the past and everything promises to be even better this year.  Good luck to our Head of Swimming, Khun X and all his team and the administration staff in putting on this great festival.

FOBISIA ICT Primary Teacher Workshop

This workshop will be held at the Primary campus and is designed to focus on the further development of Primary teacher ICT skills in the classroom as everyone has to be a specialist in this field in today's educational world. This will be lead by our own Primary specialist class and ICT  teachers, Mr Jose O’Donovan Soler and Ms Maria Ruiz.

NAE Regional Conference

Next Sunday, 3 March, we will welcome over 90 delegates to the NAE Regional Conference which this year our school has had the honour of hosting. Delegates will come from the 12 other NAE international school in our region along with the regional management teams. This conference is a great opportunity for delegates in our region to share their experience of the Global Campus and how to foster and develop greater inclusion in education.  This conference will run through to lunch time on Tuesday with our whole school having a staff training day on Monday 4 March so many of our own staff will have opportunities to be included in staff development training.

Visiting Author - Jonathan Camm

On Thursday 7 March, we have a visiting author on the Primary campus - Jonathan Camm. He is an English author, writer of the wonderful 'Countdown Mysteries' series. During the day with us, Jonathan will be spending some time with each of the KS2 classes. In these sessions, he will be explaining his journey to becoming an author. He will read extracts from some of his books and he will also explain the process of how he creates his stories. Additionally, the children will have some time to ask him any questions - a very valid activity for any budding authors.

During the day, the children will have the opportunity to buy some of Jonathan's excellent books. He will be able to write a personal message in them, which the children always enjoy receiving. If you would like to place an order before his visit, please fill in the form by clicking on this link. If you have already placed an order, but have not yet sent the money to the school office, please do so between Monday 4 March and Wednesday 6 March. This Friday, a reminder will be sent to all parents who have placed book orders.

If you would like to find out more information about Jonathan Camm, please visit his website.

Air Quality

Although the air quality has greatly improved with the change in the weather, our school shall continue to monitor this carefully and follow our air quality policy.

Our school has installed air quality or air pollution monitors on both the High School and Primary School campuses. These monitors give us local readings of the air quality levels within our two campuses. There is one air quality monitor based in the High School that is linked to the Government monitoring system which parents can view through online links.

The air quality monitors at each campus are both in the outside environment and in shared areas. This allows us to compare the quality of the air inside our teaching areas with the outside environment. For the last two years all our air-conditioning units which continually circulate and cool the air in our teaching areas have been fitted with additional filtration. This is a specialised 3M filter designed to filter the smallest particles from the air inside the classrooms. This means when the air conditioning is turned on, the air inside our school is filtered and the air quality monitors show it to be much clearer than the outside environment. The specialised filter is changed every 3 months or sooner if required ensuring that the air inside each area is kept clean. This means that once inside the school buildings our school community is working is a clearer healthy environment.

Our school has purchased some additional air purifier machines.  These will be placed in different classrooms across the school to see if they further improve the air quality in these spaces.  If this test period proves positive then we shall look at installing them across the school so that we have additional facilities in place to ensure that the air inside our buildings is clean and healthy.  Our school has met, and will be working with, some specialist companies and experts in this field to look at how we can further improve the quality of the environment within the classrooms so that we are even more prepared for this problem when it occurs in the future.  There may be some more alterations we can make in the long vacation to ensure that the air quality in our inside learning environments.

Idling in the Car Park

Please do not allow your cars to be left idling in the car park at school. The issues we have had with air pollution is directly related to car exhaust fumes and it is important that we all follow the school policy to reduce as much of these admissions around our school. There will soon be signs around our school car park giving information about the law as well as about the pollution caused by idling car engines and the sanctions that can be imposed. The District Environmental Officers will review the problem and, working with the school, could fine individuals who leave their cars idling in the school car park or surrounding area.

Parking

The new car parking facility at Suk71 by Soi 24 near our school is available for our parents to park in the morning and afternoon. One of our security guards will be present at Suk71 to assist vehicles with parking.

There is also parking available at MaxValu on Soi 71 with a shuttle bus service to Primary School both in the mornings and at the close of the school day.

Please do not park in any of the streets around Soi 20. We have had discussions with the police who will be touring these areas in the mornings and after school and will wheel clamp any cars that are parked illegally in this zone. At the moment, drop off on Soi 20 is still allowed but the police have advised the school that the time parents and children are taking to leave their cars has caused serious congestion and they will review this drop off again with the school to see whether it should remain open.

School Calendar 2019-2020

The school calendar showing our term dates and holidays throughout the year is available on the school website at this link.

For parents with enquiries about Primary School, please contact officeps@standrews.ac.th or Tel: +66 2 381-2387-8

For parents with enquiries about High School, please contact officehs@standrews.ac.th or Tel: +66 2 056-9555.