The school week this week, started on Sunday morning when I met five intrepid souls for our weekly Sunday morning Kilimanjaro training session at a local Warsaw park. We spent the morning walking up and down a variety of hills with almost 8KG on our backs. We covered almost 11K in the two hours we spent walking which shows it was not exactly a slow meander! The conversation was entertaining to say the least and with our next training session just a couple of days away, these sessions are quickly becoming one of my personal highlights of the week.
Another highlight of this week, has been the chance to work alongside the Year 11 students in their PSHE lessons as we started the topic of future plans and careers. This week alone we held a workshop on what the future job market would look like and started to consider career options and furthermore, today the IB Student Leadership team and I presented to the Year 10, Year 11 and Pre-IB students the first of several talks on the IB programme at TBS Warsaw.
It was great to hear the Year 13 talk with so much authority on the matter (they really are experts on school now) and even more encouraging was the level of questions being asked by the Key Stage 4 students who started to realise that these choices need to be made very soon.
Please note that as part of the IB Options process there are two events coming up soon in the school calendar:
- A PTA Information morning “An Introduction to the IB” on Thursday 23rd January at 8:15am
- The IB Options Evening on Wednesday 29th January at 6:00pm
Congratulations to the final group of students that this week completed their UK university applications through the online UCAS process. We have had a record number of students applying to the UK, with many more applying to the USA, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and of course Warsaw. Year 13 students have receiving offers throughout the Christmas period, with many more waiting to hear as some universities do not make offers until March! We currently have students holding offers from – Cambridge, Imperial College London, Kings College London, Queens College London, UCL, Warwick, Manchester, Loughborough, Exeter, Lancaster….the list goes on.
Finally, congratulations to the Year 12 and Pre-IB students that completed their mid-year exams with the minimum of fuss. Now they can look forward to the further developing their CAS projects, deciding on their Extended Essay questions and starting to think seriously about the university application process.
Matt Lennon
Head of IBDP, University Advisor
Assistant Headteacher