New Parent Update - 13th June 2014

Dear NAIS Parents,

Welcome to our fourth Parent Update. It was a real pleasure for our Principal, Brian Cooklin, and Assistant Principal, Sarah Harley, to meet so many of our NAIS parents this morning over coffee and cakes in Stanley.

Please take the time to carefully read the information below, especially in regard to bus routes, and please come back to us if anything is not clear.

1.BUSES – URGENT RESPONSE REQUIRED

Thank you all for your feedback with regard to the draft bus routes that we sent out last week. We really do welcome you getting in touch and helping us to develop routes that will get your children safely to and from school. We attach a revised draft of the routes, in which we have incorporated as many of the suggestion as possible that you have made over the last ten days.  For clarity, the pick-up times in this document are the times between which the children will be picked up and these may change (to become a little later) once we have responses from all parents and have finalised the routes.

We are mindful that, despite our very best efforts, we may not be able to offer bus routes for all our families. The government regulations surrounding bus companies have recently been tightened, which means that we’re not able to offer as many buses as we would like. This is hugely frustrating for us, but we are doing all we can to create routes that satisfy the majority of our families. 

We wanted to give you all an outline of the restrictions that dictate our planning for the bus routes, so that have a good understanding of the factors in play:

• We are required to use franchise buses and, due to changes in legislation, there are fewer franchise buses available for hire.
• Each bus has a maximum capacity, so we are obviously constrained by this.
• Around 30% of our students have not yet let us know whether they will take the bus, either because they’re not able to commit or are relocating from overseas.

If you have not done so already, it is now incredibly urgent that you confirm your intention to USE - OR NOT USE - the bus service.  We are required to finalise our routes with the bus company by 20 June. Please contact us if you have not yet registered and/or have not yet informed us of your residential address from 1 September.

Thank you all again for your patience. We do appreciate that buses are an important issue for our parents – and for us – and we are continuing to do all we can, within the constraints imposed on us.

2.TUITION INVOICES

We will be sending out invoices for payment of the first term’s school fees soon and these fees will be payable in August.  Please let us know if you have any questions or would like more information.

3.OCTOPUS CARDS

As many of you know, we are using Octopus cards for students to check in and out of the school, take out library books etc.  To prepare the cards – which will double-up as NAIS Student cards – we need a digital photo of your child (a passport-style photo would be ideal). Please could we ask you to send your photos to admissions@nais.hk, together with your child’s full name and year group.

4.PLAYGROUND

Finally, we wanted to share our fabulous playground design with you.  Some of you will have been following the antics of Che the school panda on our facebook page (www.facebook.com/NAISHongKong).  Our panda theme continues into the playground with our incredibly versatile and fun-filled climbing apparatus.  Our younger pupils are going to have so much fun with this!

We have also ordered a lot of bats, balls, hoops and other equipment to keep our pupils active during break time!

5.       PREVIOUS UPDATES

If you have only recently joined us and you missed our past Parent Updates, you can access them via the links below:

• Parent Update 28 April 2014
• Parent Update 17 March 2014
• Parent Update 29 May 2014

Our next Parent Update will focus on more aspects of our Curriculum as well as suggestions on what you can do with your children over the Summer holidays to prepare them for Day 1 at NAIS.

We leave you with a photo of our Principal, Mr Cooklin, modelling the NAIS school cap (see attachment). We think he looks very stylish!

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Admissions Team. We’ll be here over July and August as we prepare for our Orientations Days for pupils and parents on 28 and 29 August and the first day of Term on 1 September.