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Dear Parents,
As we approach the Lunar New Year, we bid farewell to the Year of the Buffalo, a symbol of persistence and determination. I am sure we can all agree that this has certainly been an apt representation of the qualities needed to navigate the past year. We now look forward to celebrating Tet with our families and welcoming in the Year of the Tiger.
According to Vietnamese tradition, the Tiger’s characteristics are to be brave, confident and display great levels of willpower. It is these characteristics that we can now adopt as we move forward to returning to BIS school life - learning together on campus. Although the Tiger is also known as a symbol of the unpredictable, I am hopeful that we have endured enough unpredictability in the last year and the period ahead will be characterised by some welcome stability!
Our Year 7s will finally be on campus for Orientation Events on Monday and Tuesday next week, after 10 months of learning online. A warm welcome is awaiting them from their teachers and fellow students in other year groups.
Please find in this week’s update a taste of another successful week in the life of the Secondary Campus. This week saw our Year 11 and Year 13 students complete their Mock examinations and return to lessons. They will now gain feedback from their teachers which will enable them to focus their preparation for the IBDP and IGCSE examinations in May. Students across the school have also been enjoying our recently completed learning and social spaces, including the inaugural swipe of their site access cards.
With our campus community coming together after the holidays- there is certainly much to look forward to.
My best wishes to you and your families for a healthy, safe and happy year ahead.
Sean O’Neill
Head of Secondary
This week in Physics, Year 10 students were letting off some steam as they learnt about the particle model of matter! The students first learnt about how the particles in a gas exert pressure, before applying their new understanding to several exciting experiments in the laboratory, including a controlled implosion!
In the image, students are outside taking advantage of our new sports facilities, whilst enthusiastically modelling high temperature gas particles colliding with a boundary – resulting in a high pressure situation for their teacher!
The year 8s were comparing how long a candle would burn for in exhaled air and inhaled air, they had to collect the exhaled air using water displacement. The students found that the candle burned for much longer in inhaled air as it has a higher oxygen content than exhaled air which contains more carbon dioxide due to respiration!
We have been working with students and listening to parents over recent years to develop our campus facilities. Now that we are returning to our normal routines around the school, i t has been wonderful to see students making use of our most recently improved spaces to learn and connect.
Students have been discovering the many uses and facets of the new Courtyard area, from finding the perfect spot to play a game of chess with friends, to discovering the quickly ripening bananas hanging from one of the banana palm trees.
The newly expanded Hub has been used for a variety of purposes recently including learning, socializing and study.
The additional space provided by our new basketball/volleyball court and football field is finally open and getting lots of use during lessons and lunch breaks.
This year, we have improved our Security and Safeguarding with a new campus Perimeter Gate and Site Access system.
Today during Form time, all students in Years 8 -13 have been issued with a Student ID Card which they need to enter and exit the campus each day. They had their first opportunity to use the card as they exited campus this afternoon. Please check with your child that they have stored the card in a safe location with their school belongings ready to bring it to school from Monday 24th January.
Year 7 students will receive their Student ID Cards when they return to campus after the Tet holidays
To prepare Year 7 students for the transition to learning on campus, we will be holding a number of orientation events in school for our Year 7 students next week. The purpose of these sessions is to help the students familiarise themselves with our routines and protocols, meet their form tutors and classmates in person, and tour the campus to enable them to safely and confidently return to campus.
We have all waited a long time for the opportunity to welcome our Year 7 students to campus - they have shown great perseverance and commitment throughout this academic year- we can all be proud of their efforts.
We can now look forward to a return to normal school life and our Year 7 students continuing their secondary journey together in person. Emails have been sent to all Year 7 parents with the details for their child’s event this week and we look forward to seeing the students on Monday or Tuesday.
Year 7 Parent Open Morning
In addition to the Student Orientation sessions, we will hold a Year 7 Parent Open Morning on Thursday 17th February from 8:30-10:30am.
The session will include information on our community health protocols and Year 7 transition activities, and will include an opportunity for parents to meet the Secondary Campus Leadership Team as well as tour the Secondary Campus. We look forward to sharing more about this event soon.
|
Year 7 Tutor Group |
Date |
Time |
|
7B |
Monday 24th January |
09:00 - 11:15 |
|
7I |
||
|
7N |
Monday 24th January |
13:15 - 15:30 |
|
7H |
||
|
7M |
Tuesday 25th January |
09:00-11:15
|
|
7V |
||
|
7S |
Tuesday 25th January |
13:15 - 15:30 |
|
7C |
A reminder that our 2021-22 Parent Satisfaction Survey is still live at the moment for parents to complete.
We hope you will take this opportunity to tell us what you think about our school - what we are doing well and opportunities for improvement. Your feedback is vital to helping us create the best education for your child. The results from the survey will inform our strategy for continuous improvement. Therefore, the more responses we get, the more confident we can be that our action plans respond to your views.
To complete the 2021-22 Survey click here.
Thank you for taking the time to share your views as we work together as a community.
It is a BIS tradition to celebrate the beginning of the Tet period by wearing Vietnamese dress.
Students, teachers and support staff are all encouraged to wear Ao Dai or other Vietnamese clothing. There will also be form time activities to celebrate the rich culture of our host country.
We are a group of Year 12 students, and we would like to introduce you to our IBDP CAS Project in collaboration with VinaCapital Foundation's Heartbeat Vietnam program.
Since 2006, Heartbeat Vietnam has funded life-saving heart surgeries for more than 8,900 children, providing them with pre-treatment and post-operative care which includes nutritional support, travel fees, health check-ups, as well as scholarships to help them remain in school.
In Vietnam alone, approximately 16,000 children are born with congenital heart defects every year, ranging from milder conditions to more serious ones which prove to be fatal. Without surgery or intervention, these children will have a poor quality of life along with inadequate mental and physical development.
We hope to raise awareness about this problem in Vietnam and collectively raise money to help Heartbeat Vietnam save the lives of more children with these conditions in this country. For every 28 million VND, or 1200 USD, Heartbeat Vietnam will be able to provide a life-saving heart operation for a child.
We will be taking donations via bank transfer using the following details:
Beneficiary's name: The VinaCapital Foundation
Beneficiary's account number: 007 100 478 0103 (VND)
Bank name: Vietcombank - HCMC Branch
Bank address: 8 Nguyen Hue St., Ben Nghe, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Swift code: BFTVVNVX007
Transfer Note: Heartbeat BIS - [Name] - [Phone number]
Donations of any amount would be greatly appreciated and will help us achieve our goal: to save the life of at least one child.
We would like to invite you to visit our recently launched Instagram page (@heartbeatbishcmc) to find out more about this project.
Thank you for your support.
Sean Sia 12C
At BIS we value community, we take great pride in the amazing caring and kind community of learners that we have at the school. An integral part of this successful community is the maintenance of strong relationships based on respect, trust, empathy and social responsibility. We promote pro-social behaviours amongst our student body and have been very successful in this regard. Our students report back to us regularly that they are happy in school and with relationships with one another.
Following an introductory webinar giving an overview of CUG provision at BIS this spring we will have a series of university webinars based around various country destinations. This will include Australia, UK, Netherlands, Singapore, Canada and the US. The current schedule of Webinars is as follows:
February 17th 2022 - 3.00pm-4.00pm: An overview of University Guidance at BIS - The link to join this webinar is here. (No need to sign up in advance for this one).
This webinar is very much aimed at parents as well as students. It will be particularly useful for parents of students in Year 10, 11 and 12. You will hear from Dr. Simon Finnigan and Mr. Paul Rispin who will talk about the "Journey" students make through the last two years at BIS when they will be making plans for future university study. This journey can of course be very different depending on their desired destinations. Dr Finnigan and Mr Rispin will give their expert advice on what might make a successful university application strategy and why such strategies need to be carefully planned. We will also be joined by current Year 13 students and possibly one or two ex-students who can talk us through their own experiences of making university applications. The dos and don'ts from a student perspective. We will also introduce our new Year 12 University Guidance Subject Ambassadors- Bella Johnston and Marya Cao- who will be assisting in the coordination -and sometimes in the hosting- of our Spring 2022 Webinar Series. They will talk us through the schedule for the next 6 weeks which will have webinars every Thursday at 3.30pm.
February 24th 2022 - 3.30pm-5pm: Australian University Fair - Please sign up for this at this link.
This is a major event being hosted exclusively for our group of 4 British Schools, with an impressive 15 universities in attendance including the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, UNSW and ANU. There will be an overview of studying in Australia followed by each university being in a breakout room. This will give students and parents a fantastic opportunity to individually ask questions of the university representatives. This event is recommended for any students considering applying to Australia.
March 3rd 2022 - 3.30pm-4.30pm: Studying in the UK - Please sign up for this at this link.
The UK is a world leader when it comes to Higher Education. This webinar will look at the huge range of opportunities available for those students interested in studying in the UK. Representatives from both Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of York will give their expert advice to students and parents.
March 10th 2022 - 3.30pm - 4.30pm: Studying in Holland - Please sign up for this at this link.
Did you know that there are over 2100 study programmes in Holland which are taught in English?
Oanh Trung of 'Neso Vietnam*' will be joined by at least two university representatives from universities situated in Holland. There will be an overview of studying at university in Holland then an introduction to two of the universities**, followed by Questions and Answers.*Neso Vietnam is the Dutch Education Support Office in Vietnam and is the official representative in Vietnam for all matters concerning Dutch Higher Education.** Further details on which universities to come.
March 17th, 24th and 31st we will have Webinars focussing on Singapore, Canada and the US. More details on these to follow.
We hope to see you at one or more of these events.
Kind regards
Paul Rispin
University Guidance
My best wishes to you and your families for a healthy, safe and happy year ahead.
Kind regards,
Sean O’Neill
Head Teacher, Secondary Campus
We are incredibly proud of our Year 11 class of 2024, for their impressive IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) results. This incredible cohort of 155 students, our largest IGCSE class in the history of the school, have significantly surpassed UK and international averages and were awarded 97% of all grades at A*-C. An incredible 62% of all grades awarded were at A*-A.
A whole world of possibilities awaits our graduating class of 2023. With 385 university offers so far, and many more still to come from Korea, Australia and Singapore, their remarkable IBDP achievements have opened pathways to some of the best universities and specialist institutions across the globe.