Our Principal Christopher Short looks back on a very busy and successful term.
Dear DCIS Parents,
We have finally reached the end of a very busy and successful term and I am sure all members of the DCIS community are looking forward to a well-earned rest.
The highlight of the half term was the visit by the CIS and WASC accreditation teams. As I write we are still waiting for the formal outcome of the process but we had some lovely feedback from the visitors and we eagerly await the formal reports. We are very proud of our achievements at Dover Court and (without getting too far ahead of ourselves!) therefore we are grateful of an external validation of this from two respected accreditation agencies. I will be in contact early next term with the official outcome of the visit and a summary of the commendations and recommendations the team makes.
We have had some really interesting visitors to the school including Adrian Hayes, who holds the record for climbing Everest and visiting both poles in 18 months. He will be back next term to speak to more of our year groups. Zoe Griffiths enchanted our Secondary students with the wonders of the power of Maths and we had visitors from Michael Ng and Esther Seah Hui En from The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) to support our students’ learning in History. We also enjoyed two very powerful visits from NAE Juilliard specialists in Drama and Dance.
The UN Day was another wonderful success this year. It was fantastic to see our families representing and sharing information on the 55 countries and territories we have in the school community. I am grateful for the hard work of our UN committee led by Ms Hyland and Ms Gray for their great work pulling this together. One of my many regrets of not being at DCIS next year is seeing how the school continues to develop this lovely exposition of our diverse Dover Court community. Our choir have been involved in two high profile events this half term. The first was singing, with the choirs from the other British Schools in Singapore and southern Malaysia, at the annual Remembrance Service at Kranji. The second was providing the welcome entertainment at the Great British Ball organised by the British Chamber of Commerce and the British Club.
We had a number of trips and expeditions this term. A group of intrepid Secondary students took part in the World Scholars Cup, firstly in Manila and then at the Grand Final in Yale, USA. The team came back with an impressive haul of medals. Year 5 started the year group expeditions with a four-day trip to Indonesia and came back with many an exciting tale of their adventures.
In sport our first ever NAE games team made up of 19 boys and girls from Years 5 and 6 competed against 9 other NAE SEA schools in Vietnam. A great time was had with some good team performances.
The ACSIS season 1 ended in November, with some fantastic results for DCIS. Our U16 boys football team won a bronze medal and our U12 netballers “cleaned up” with gold, silver and bronze medals in their respective divisions. There was also the Middle School Swimming Championships, with many swimmers setting personal records.
It was really good to see over 90 runners from Years 3-12 representing DCIS at the ACSIS cross-country championships held at Pasir-Ris. A huge well done to our U14 Boys team who gained a bronze medal out of 19 schools. Within Primary PE it has been superb to see a record number of teams and students competing in a variety of sports in a non-competitive environment, with up to 15 teams playing each week. We have also been really pleased to introduce numerous new teams, including our first ever U11 boys and girls basketball teams, secondary girls contact rugby teams an U16 boys rugby team and several dance groups.
The last week of term started with a fantastic Christmas Fayre organised by our DCA. We are also grateful to the DCA for our wonderful Christmas decorations around the school. They set the scene for the heart-warming Christmas productions by EYFS and Key Stage 1.
I wish all members of the DCIS community the very best for the Christmas holiday. Good luck to those of you who are moving on to new adventures. Thank you once again for the kind comments on my departure. I can now confirm that I am heading to China to be the Executive International Principal at Nord Anglia Chinese International School (NACIS) in Shanghai.
Christopher Short
Principal
