Letter from the Principal: February and March Highlights

Our Principal Christopher Short reflects on another busy and successful term at DCIS

Dear Parents,

This term has had a strange shape to it with a tightly packed short first half of term and an equally tightly packed but much longer second half of term. We have had the usual round of sporting success including an impressive haul of trophies and medals at the U13 FOBISIA Games in Phuket. We were delighted to host Olympic Triathlon medallist Jonny Brownlee and three other world class athletes who worked with a group of our children to explain the rigours of training to be a professional athlete. 30 of our students then had the opportunity to act as guards of honour at the inaugural Super League Triathlon on Sentosa. Preceding this event 12 of our staff were involved in the Corporate team challenge Triathlon doing very well. As we changed the format of the swimming galas only some year groups had theirs this term but Mr Holmes’ legendary control of the weather continued! Well done Years 3 and 4 for some fantastic swimming.

The number of local trips to support the curriculum has been impressive with almost all year groups exploring a part of Singapore at some point in the last 8 weeks. There have also been the residential trip to Thailand for Year 6, the Global Campus expedition to Tanzania, FOBISIA Maths trips for both Primary and Secondary teams and the NAE Performing Arts Festival in Hanoi. We had two lovely performances to end Term 2 – the annual Proms and the Choirs’ Spring Concert. It was brilliant to see so much musical talent performing.

Led by our IBDP students and the Student Council we have increased our community and charity work through this school year. We’ve also had successful awareness days for Down Syndrome and Autism. We’ve run a large number of parent workshops and parent support group meetings, which I know, from speaking to parents, are useful ways to support families in their children’s continued learning and development at home.

I am very grateful to the DCA for their tireless support of the school and for helping engender the community feel we have on campus. This half term we have had the Parent Quiz Night, congratulations to the winning team, The Rebel Rousers (I can’t remember where our team was placed, but I do know that we beat the other staff team!), the Upper Primary Discos and the Family Movie Night. A big thank you to Karyn for her great work as Chair of the DCA, to Celeste and Aisling who are the incoming Co-Chairs, the parents on the committee and to all volunteers for making these events happen.

The absolute highlight of my half term was two weeks ago when I spent my day as a Primary student. Wearing my (slightly larger) Lower Primary shirt and the best I could do for the rest of the uniform I joined the school bus and then went onto 12 lessons across the complete age range, from Nursery to Year 6. The younger children were somewhat bemused and the older children amused as I went from lesson to lesson trying my hand at Mandarin, basketball, maths, English and a range of other subjects. The time I spent in the Nursery class was very special with the children treating me as just another class member. Ms Unsworth even went as far as to write a report on my brief time in the classroom – she did however overlook the fact I used my iPhone to show my new friends some photos of turtles as we were talking about our favourite animals! We’d initially arranged the day as a response to the fantastic response to our annual Parent Satisfaction survey and it was a useful, yet tiring day! I met some non-teaching friends that evening who couldn’t quite fully understand what I’d done all day! 

The satisfaction survey results were very pleasing and the summary has been shared already. 

The building of our new Secondary block and the covered sports hall began in earnest this half term. There has been great progress on this over the last few weeks and we look forward to the expanded space in August. As well as new facilities for Secondary, this will also allow us to further develop spaces for the Primary School including a new Maker Space to support our MIT STEAM projects.

After five very successful years at Dover Court Ian Rinaldi is leaving the school at the end of the school year to take up a Head of Primary position in the Middle East. We will have an opportunity to say goodbye and thank you to Mr Rinaldi at the end of next term and I know you will join me in wishing the Rinaldi family all the best. Andrew Marshall will be moving to be Deputy Head – Upper Primary and we are currently recruiting for a Deputy Head – Inclusion. I will update you once this process is complete.

Finally, there is always a movement of children at the end of each term, that is the nature of international life in Singapore. We wish all our departing families the very best as they move onto new adventures and we look forward to welcoming new families for Term 3.

I hope all our staff, students and parents have a restful Easter holiday and I look forward to welcoming you back on 23rd April.

Christopher Short
Principal