As we celebrate the spirit of community I wanted to inform you that one member of our school community will be leaving us this summer to join her husband in Singapore. Mrs Lisa Passante, as you know, joined us from our sister school in Beijing in 2015. During the last few months her husband has been relocated to Singapore which understandably means that she will be leaving us at the end of the academic year. I would like to thank Mrs Passante for all her hard work and inspiration in making the primary school the school it is today. We will most certainly miss her drive, determination and passion for high quality education. After a world-wide search, which resulted in a number of high quality applications from both Nord Anglia Education Leaders and external candidates, I am delighted to confirm that we have appointed Mr. Barrie Scymgeour from our own team as her successor. Mr. Scrymgeour joined NAIS Pudong 5 years ago, following a successful leadership career in the UK; and as current Deputy Head of Primary, he has worked as part of the leadership securing high standards across all aspects of school life. I am sure you will join me in congratulating Mr Scrymgeour who will be supported by Mrs Passante during the next 2 terms transitioning into his new role. Additionally I am in the process of completing the recruitment of a new Head of Secondary to support our talented Secondary Leadership Team. More to follow on this before the end of term.
When we talk about leadership, I have the secure feeling that our students most certainly are developing into the leaders of the future. Last weekend we hosted our first MUN conference supported by Mr Gichana and Mr Watson. The MUN Freedom Conference was most certainly a student led imitative and I would like to congratulate the team involved in organising the event; in particular a special mention to Ashley Fung and Diether Arias for their coordination in their roles as Secretary-Generals and Mathilde Venet as the Deputy Secretary-General. The team most certainly highlighted what it means at NAIS Pudong to be personally ambitious. Read more about our Model UN Conference here.
Other examples of personally ambitious students are those who participated in the STEAM challenge to have the opportunity to represent NAIS Pudong at MIT in 2017. There are many difficult challenges when running a school and being part of the decision making panel behind this was no doubt one of my toughest yet. Congratulations to all students who participated in the ‘Hack the Tube’ challenge. You can read more here but I would like to congratulate the 4 students below, in particular, selected to attend the event next year.
- Phoebe McLuskie (Year 7) – with her ‘PhoebePhone’ hack
- Jada Chen (Year 6) – with her sundial hack
- Seung Woo Lee (Year 6) – with his emotions robot hack
- Conlan Morton (Year 6) – with his working car hack