Dear DCIS Parents and Guardians,
We have just finished another busy and successful half term at school.
We are very pleased to have the house system up and running and I am grateful to Mr. Liperus and Ms Good for their hard work in this area. The Sports Days were a tremendous success and made all the better for the competition provided by the House System. It was wonderful to see children in house shirts or house colours. The house system will continue to grow over the coming months. The Sports Days augmented the extremely pleasing results we have had in competitive sport against other schools in Singapore. The PE department and other teachers who have coached teams have worked with our talented students to achieve this ambitious success.
I was very excited to see a sneak preview of our school production of Grease in assembly a few weeks ago. This will be an excellent exposition of performing arts skills from our students.
Our new block opened earlier in the term and will provide extra space for Learning Support and Secondary examinations for the rest of this year. Next year it will allow us increased facilities for both music and computing as well as more space for STEAM activities. Important (and often overlooked) we also have increased toilet facilities around the playground areas. The younger children are enjoying their newly located vertical playground.
I made two trips to London this term. The first was to attend the British International Schools Awards dinner. We were the only school in Singapore shortlisted but we were alongside some very well-known schools around the World. We were therefore delighted to win in our category.
My second trip was to our annual recruiting event. We don’t have many staff leaving this year but we are hiring more staff to cater for the continued expansion of the Secondary school and expand provision in PE and Computing across the school. Roughly half of our staff are hired from other international schools while the other half move straight from the UK. This gives us a good balance of staff experience. Meeting new UK based staff in London also acts as the start of our induction process as we make sure we give guidance on moving overseas, usually for the first time. The event allows prospective colleagues to meet other members of the Nord Anglia Education team and learn about our partnerships and external programmes. It also allows myself and other Principals to hear about updates in our relationships with our partner organisations – watch this space for the next exciting chapter in our collaboration with UNICEF.
We have had two visitors from the Council of International Schools in school this week. We became members last year but are now beginning the accreditation process. Over the next 18 months we will perform a rigorous self review. Parents will be invited to be part of this process. We will then invite a larger team from CIS back into the school to finalise our accreditation. It is really important to us that we have this external verification of the work that we do.
I wish you all the best for half term and Chinese New Year.
Christopher Short
Principal