High School: Celebrating and inspiring excellence

Updates on two ceremonies at the Shangri-La last Wednesday and this week’s Global Action Week.

BTEC and Outstanding Learner Award Ceremonies

In the last two weeks, I have discussed last year’s IB Diploma Programme and IGCSE results. These were followed by two separate ceremonies that I attended at the Shangri-La Hotel on Wednesday last week.

In the first of the ceremonies, St Andrews was recognized as one of the first schools in Thailand approved to teach and assess Pearson BTECs, one of the alternative courses to (I)GCSEs and the IB Diploma Programme that we offer our students.

Last week we also heard that August (left), China and Pete (right), in last year’s Year 13 had achieved their Entry Level BTEC Award in Hospitality

Later on Wednesday, Mr Tim and I, and Yu Jin’s parents, were very proud to be at the Pearson Outstanding Learner Award Ceremony where Yu Jin (Year 13) was recognized for achieving the Highest Mark in the World in Edexcel GCSE Art, Craft and Design in the Summer 2018 exams. You can read more about Yu Jin, and see some examples of her GCSE and IB Diploma Programme artwork in Mr Tim’s High School Art section below.

Two more examples of “meeting all the needs of the individual learner” and inspiring students “to be the best they can be”.

Air Quality Policy

Following a very early high AQI Day on Friday last week, a reminder of our Air Quality Policy. As the policy says, we have 12 AirVisual air monitoring devices, inside and outside, across Primary and the High School. You can see data from our public AirVisual devices here, but please remember that AirVisual delay reporting data from public devices and that it is our live data that we use to make all decisions about student activities.

Roo Stenning (roo.st@standrews.ac.th)

Head of High School

Global Action Week - 20th -27th September

Last Friday - September 20th - millions of people worldwide took to the streets to protest for their future, including several students from St Andrews. This marked the start of Global Action Week, as proposed by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in a tweet: “The next global strikes will be on 20th and 27th September with a global ‘Action Week’ in between.” In honour of this, the suSTAinability Group has organised some in-school activities for the upcoming week, allowing students to engage in sustainable activities!

Activities will range from a bake sale to a giant Kahoot on fast fashion, recycling paper to make notebooks for underprivileged children, and building eco-bricks. The week will finish off with a non-uniform day, allowing students to dress in the colours of their favourite UN Sustainable Development Goal(s) for 50 baht. Alongside this, we will have clothes donation boxes at the HS turnstiles and in the atrium, a uniform donation box in the Senior Common Room, and a second-hand uniform sale at High School on Thursday. Through the activities, we hope to raise awareness of the ongoing climate crisis. The collected money and clothes will be donated.

As Greta Thunberg says: “You are never too small to make a difference.”

Manon (Year 13)
President of The suSTAinability Group