Dear DCIS Parents and Guardians,
I am delighted to start this month’s update with some fantastic news for the DCIS community. As you will know we recently hosted a visit by two members of the International Baccalaureate Organization to examine our preparedness for offering the IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) from August 2017. This week we have received a letter confirming that DCIS is to become an authorised IB World School, Diploma Programme. There were many commendations given to DCIS, some of which are highlighted below:
‘The IB commends the school for their commitment towards the development of the learner profile attributes. This was repeatedly evident throughout the visit and is already well embedded into the teachers ' ethos.’
‘The IB commends the school for the obvious open and good relations between all sectors of the school community. This was noted on several occasions, even when simply walking round the campus, and it was well supported by comments made by the parents, the students and the teachers.’
‘The IB commends the school for their obvious expertise in and dedication to the provision of useful and effective feedback to students, centering on the premise that each student should always know what to do next in order to improve.’
‘The IB commends the school for their existing culture of encouraging students to participate in and reflect on their learning, which means that when students enter the IB Diploma Programme they will already be familiar with this practice.’
This achievement is a culmination of two years’ hard work by teachers at DCIS, led by our Deputy Head of Secondary, Mrs. Heather Rinaldi. We are all looking forward to completing our preparations and welcoming our first IBDP cohort of students in August 2017.
Last month we gave details of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) collaboration with Nord Anglia Education. Mrs. Mahoney (Science Subject Leader) and I had the great pleasure of listening to a number of students from Years 5, 6 and 7 pitching their ideas so we could select four students to participate in the MIT trip to Boston. In what was a very difficult decision, we have made the final selection and chosen the participants. I will update you with further details as appropriate.
The Secondary School is a little quieter this week as we are running our Years 6 to 11 trips to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The students have all been participating in different activities and we are looking forward to their return. We have seen some great updates and photographs throughout this week and they are all having a fantastic time. My thanks go to the trip organisers and participating teachers for their hard work and commitment; these events take many hours of careful planning to run so smoothly. Thank you to parents for your support and words of encouragement.
Our students continue to be very active with the Global Campus. We are pleased to share that DCIS have had a number of students shortlisted for the Creative Writing Competition - Jiah (6CP), Suhani (7C) and Emma (10C). These shortlisted entries will now be put forward for worldwide judging for further awards and will all appear in the 2016-2017 Creative Writing Anthology. The Visual Arts Competition has now launched for students to illustrate these winning pieces of writing. We will soon have the Lego Challenge for Primary and Secondary; information on this will be available on the Global Campus Online. Planning is also now well underway for this year’s Global Challenge, in partnership with UNICEF, and we look forward to sharing more information on this in the coming weeks.
Following the conclusion of our Year 11 mock examinations, the students and their mentors are in the process of discussing the results. The mentors, mentees and parents will have a clear idea of which areas need to be addressed and what plans need to be out in place to help our students maximise their outcomes in the final examinations in May/June.
The recent news sent out about our purchase of lockers has caused much excitement amongst students and parents. We are hoping to have these in place in the next six weeks so students can benefit from having a secure personal storage space and keep their exercise books and textbooks at school rather than bringing them to and fro each day.
Finally, a reminder of two important calendar events. Our Year 9 Options Evening is an event where students will decide on the optional subjects they will take at iGCSE (in addition to English, Maths and Science). The event will be taking place on Thursday 16th February in the Cooper Hall and the teachers will be available to discuss the content of the different curricula. Further details will be sent out soon.
We will also be having our Term 2 Parent Consultation Evenings on Wednesday 8th and Thursday 9th March. We are hoping to implement an automated booking system for appointments and are testing a system at present. Further details will be available soon. To conclude I would like to wish you all a restful half term and look forward to welcoming you all to the Parent Consultation Evenings.
Kind regards,
John Smith
Head of Secondary