This week sees Sustainability Week at Primary School and “Week Without” at High School...Our St Andrews International School Bangkok Golfers had a great day on Saturday at our first ever Community Golf Day... Parents are reminded about parking restrictions in and around the Primary School...Please remember to complete the NAE Parents’ Satisfaction Survey if you haven’t already.
Last week really was a great start to our second term here at St Andrews International School Bangkok. Our school community at both campuses quickly settled down to work and there was a great buzz around the whole place.
A special thank you to Miss Helen and her team for organizing our first Eco Beasts Community Action Day last Thursday. Our school hosted this event and 14 other international schools sent along teams to take part in this first day of action. There was a wide range of environmentally-friendly businesses offering workshops to all the students to show them the wide range of things that are being done in this area to use waste, especially plastic, in a sustainable way not just throwing it out. After lunch, each school produced an action plan using some of the great things they had seen and learned about throughout the morning.
I look forward to seeing what our teams produced and how we can move forward in this area.
On Friday we had members from the World Wildlife Fund in school reporting on the terrible plight facing wild tigers. They gave two great assemblies first thing and there were lots of different activities going on throughout the day.
These two fantastic events were a great start to our Sustainability Week which starts today, Monday 14 January. There will be lots of different work and activities taking place throughout the week to try to make everyone more aware of the threats facing our planet as a result of our own lifestyles.
At High School, we will be encouraging participation in Week Without. This is one of the biggest fund raising events of the year whereby students, teachers and staff give something up for the week to raise money for the school service projects and school charity through sponsorship. There will be a prize for the student who raises the most through sponsors. As a further encouragement for participation, Week Without also serves as competition between the Houses and tutor groups.
On Saturday morning I went to the Unico Grande golf course and met with the large party of St Andrews International School Bangkok Golfers who were joining together for our first Golf Community Tournament. There was a briefing to explain the rules of the tournament where each team of four would use the “best ball” for the subsequent shots. There was a great atmosphere as each group teed off and started their 18 holes. We had 56 golfers participating, consisting of students, parents and staff from the whole school community.
Play was followed in the evening with a Golf Community dinner at Bistro 33 where everyone enjoyed the stories of the day and there were lots of prizes given for all the efforts individuals and teams had made. Thank you to everyone for taking part and especially Matt McMahon and Andrew Wheeler for organising all the details to get the tournament up and running.
The team prizes at the event were won by:
Well played everyone and hope to see you at the next one!
Thank you to those parents who have already completed the NAE parents survey. The survey consists of a series of questions covering a range of areas in which the school operates. It gives parents an excellent opportunity to feedback on how you feel the school is working through a simple multiple choice set of questions along with the opportunity to write longer comments where you feel necessary. This information is summarized for the school and many important decisions are made based on the responses that have been received from parents within the school community. Please make sure you have your say. At the moment our response rate is very low compared to other years standing at around 36% of our families filling it in. Completing the survey does not take a great deal of time so I urge you to please take the time to complete it so we can have feedback that really represents the majority of our parents from across the school.
Our teaching staff have informed the school of their intentions for next academic year. It is really pleasing to see that we will have a very low turnover of teachers this year. There will be some new positions, mainly in High School, allowing us to develop an even wider set of courses across the school. We have already advertised in the UK Guardian website as well as on our own website recruitment page. We have received many applications which we will be reviewing. Next week I shall be in London UK for the NAE Recruitment Fair where I shall be meeting a large number of the applicants for the different roles we have on offer and hopefully filling many of our positions.
The new car parking facility at Suk71 by Soi 22 near our school is available for our parents to park in the morning and afternoon. One of our security guards will be present at Suk71 to help with parking.
There is also parking available at MaxValu on Soi 71 with a shuttle bus service to Primary School both in the mornings and at the close of the school day.
Please do not park in any of the streets around Soi 20. We have had discussions with the police who will be touring these areas in the mornings and after school and will wheel clamp any cars that are parked illegally in this zone. At the moment, drop off on Soi 20 is still allowed but the police have advised the school that the time parents and children are taking to leave their cars has caused serious congestion and they will review this drop off again with the school to see whether it should remain open.
The school has had several meetings with the Vadhana District office about parents leaving their cars idling in the car park and surrounding areas to the school. At the end of last term their environmental officers came to school and they will continue to monitor the idling car engine problem this term. There are now signs around our school car park giving information about the law as well as about the pollution caused by idling car engines and the sanctions that can be imposed. The District Environmental Officers will review the problem and, working with the school, could fine individuals who leave their cars idling in the school car park or surrounding area.
Furthermore, with the recent decrease in the air quality in Bangkok, we all need to do our part not to contribute to this ongoing situation by leaving car engines idling wastefully while awaiting our kids either before or after-school.
If you have drivers, please also make them aware that cars should not be idling in the car park.
All ECAs and sport training for Term 2 will start today and will run for 9 weeks between the following dates;
Monday : 14 Jan, 21 Jan, 28 Jan, 4 Feb, 11 Feb, 25 Feb, 11 March, 18 March, 25 March
Tuesday : 15 Jan, 22 Jan, 29 Jan, 5 Feb, 12 Feb, 26 Feb, 5 March, 12 March, 19 March
Wednesday : 16 Jan, 23 Jan, 30 Jan, 6 Feb, 13 Feb, 27 Feb, 6 March, 13 March, 20 March
Thursday : 17 Jan, 24 Jan, 31 Jan, 7 Feb, 14 Feb, 28 Feb, 7 March, 14 March, 21 March
Friday : 18 Jan, 25 Jan, 1 Feb, 8 Feb, 15 Feb, 1 March, 8 March, 15 March, 22 March
This term, Years 4, 5 and 6 will have their residential trips which should be a challenging but very exciting experience for all involved. I know lots of things have been prepared and work done already to make these trips really memorable and successful experiences for all our Primary children.
Each Year Group will be visiting the following places:
The High School residential trips will all take place from Monday 21 January through to Friday 25 January. These are fantastic trips where our High School students undertake challenging experiences across a wide range of areas and places within both within Thailand and abroad. They get the opportunity to meet lots of new students within their year groups and see their teacher and tutors in a different light. There is clearly a lot of hard work that goes on throughout this week but a very worthwhile experience for all participating.
The school calendar showing our term dates and holidays throughout the year is available on the school website at this link.
For parents with enquiries about Primary School, please contact officeps@standrews.ac.th or Tel: +66 2 381-2387-8
For parents with enquiries about High School, please contact officehs@standrews.ac.th or Tel: +66 2 056-9555.
With the goal of providing meaningful help to the flood victims in the northern regions of Thailand, our entire community at St Andrews Bangkok came together to raise funds and donations for the affected families. In the span of a few short weeks, added to donations of food and clothing, we managed to raise an astounding total of 386,676.50 THB in donation funds. To all students, teachers, parents, and staff who participated in our efforts and contributed to this cause—thank you!
Last Friday, the STA Primary campus was transformed into a celebration of all things maths! The day was packed with engaging, hands-on activities across all year groups, making maths truly come alive for our students.
Senior student at St Andrews Bangkok, Pun (Year 13), devises an innovative solution for effective waste management. Recently, he completed an ambitious project: an AI-powered waste sorting system. After much research and testing, he got the system to work and put the model to use in one of our rooms at school!
Physics students from St Andrews Bangkok made quite an impression at the Beamline for Schools (BL4S) competition and won the Best Outreach Award for their brilliant work. BL4S is a prestigious global physics contest organised by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland) and DESY (the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany), inviting High School students worldwide to propose detailed experiments to be conducted at a particle accelerator beamline. While our students did not win the main prize of conducting their experiment in Geneva, they still stood out and were recognised from an entry of over 400 teams.
