Year 6 ended last week with some uplifting pop songs, let’s work together this anti-bullying week and there have been health-minded additions to our internal learning environment.

I hope all our families who were celebrating Diwali past last weekend had a splendid time. When watching the news over the past few days, it was both enlightening and sobering to see how festivals in other parts of the world had to be curtailed due to social distancing and lockdown measures brought on by the global pandemic. This makes one realise how lucky we are at the moment in Thailand with respect to being spared further restrictions and lockdowns to combat second and even third waves of rising COVID-19 infection numbers. The fact that our school continues to operate as near normal as possible, and that students are actively participating in extracurricular activities, sports training and competitions around the city is truly something to be thankful for.

Our school will continue to remain vigilant with measures like temperature checking everyone who enters either of our school’s campuses and requiring that everyone on campus wears face masks or shields. I’m proud to say that, on the whole, our community has been very good with following these precautions while at school.

In addition, as many in our community have been traveling around Thailand, it would be greatly appreciated if everyone upon returning to Bangkok could keep their Health & Travel Declaration Form (found on Moodle) up to date. This information could be an important contact tracing record for the Ministry of Public Health in the unfortunate event of an outbreak.

Thank you all for your continued support and cooperation in all these areas to keep our school community safe.

Anti Bullying Week

Anti-bullying Week starts off with a non-uniform day in Primary School and odd socks day in High School. There will be a lot of activities taking place all week to really reinforce how the school community can and should work together to stamp out bullying in any form at our school. The message for this year is to stand up against bullies and to support each other. Wearing odd socks signals that you are against bullying and communicates this resolve with the rest of the school. On Friday there will be sessions in wellbeing and PSHE lessons related to this topic with different activities appropriate for different age groups of the students.

Year 6 Pop Groups

Last Friday it was great to watch the Year 6 students performing in four pop groups in the Primary School Quad. Catchy and uplifting music emanated from different instruments of all shapes and sizes being played by students of all shapes and sizes in each band. The event was truly a great way to finish the week in Primary.

Further improvements to the internal learning environment.

The weather recently has been amazing - even bordering on cool, one might argue. However, we have been carefully monitoring the AQI readings on air pollution at this time of year to ensure that if readings should rise that we follow our school policy regarding the types and amount of activities that can take place outside with our students.

This time of year in the past has had many problems with air pollution in Bangkok, and it is important that you know how we worked to improve the quality of air in our internal learning environment.

Our school community actually spends most of their time in classrooms or large facilities like the Sports Hall. In all these areas, similar to last year, there are individual air purifiers working continuously to ensure that the environment inside is healthy. This year we are adding a fresh air system which will pump clean air into each shared area creating positive pressure zones which in turn creates a steady flow of this air into classrooms and all the rooms attached to these shared areas. This will greatly supplement the action of our air purifiers and ensure even safer and healthier activity spaces.

Vaccination Programme

For a number of years, we have been hosting a Flu Vaccination Programme for our school community. Last year, we were pleased to report that over 500 people in our school community received the flu vaccination in school- 221 STA staff and 228 students and parents.

This year’s Flu Vaccination Programme will be held on Friday 27th November between 1 pm and 4 pm in the Drama Studio at the Primary School. The programme, in collaboration with Samitivej Hospital, will be open to all members of the family at a price of 590 baht per shot.

How to register
The programme is popular, and this year we anticipate a tremendous turnout. To make sure we have ordered enough vaccines, we ask that you complete the form below to register. Please note that one form must be completed for each person who is to receive the vaccine.

With parental consent, High School students may take the shuttle bus over to Primary at 2.30pm to receive their vaccination independently.

• Flu Vaccination Registration Google Form for STA Families
• Forms to be printed out, completed and brought on the day with the payment

School Calendar

Our school will follow the recently updated school calendar that has been shared with our school community and is available on our school website. We realise the Government has recently brought in some additional holidays in November and altered holiday dates in December. However, St Andrews will not be adding any additional holidays or making any further changes to the calendar.

For your convenience, you can find the updated school calendar for 2020-2021 here.

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.