Welcome to the new school year! Here are our 25 new High School teachers, our new Heads of Year and additions to our extensive Counselling Team. Over the summer, our IB and I/GCSE students received our best-ever results— more information about these to follow during the upcoming Parents’ Information Evenings.
Welcome to the new school year - I hope that you all had a safe, healthy and enjoyable holiday.
I would like to especially welcome the parents of the 120 new students joining the High School this morning. It was good to meet so many of you in last week’s Moodle sessions with Mr Keith. If you would like to watch these sessions again or simply familiarise yourself with our online learning portals, please check out our Introduction to VSE website.
As I said in my video message to the students this morning, it was very strange to walk into such a quiet school on the first day of the new school year, but I know that the students spent a very valuable two hours with their Tutor Groups this morning. Since then, I have spoken to many teachers who have told me how great it is to be back with their classes, or meeting new classes, after a week, or more for our new teachers, of meetings and planning.
We have welcomed 25 new teachers to the High School this year, as shown above, and it has been great to welcome them to St Andrews over the last two weeks. I know that they will make a real contribution to the school this year.
During this morning’s time with their Tutor Groups, the students will have also met their Head of Year. This year we have two Heads of Year for each of Years 7-10, who will work together to ensure that we can even better support the wellbeing of our students, providing the “safe, happy and supportive environment” that is so important at St Andrews, as well as a new Head of Year for Year 11.
The Heads of Year will continue to work closely with both Mr Andrew (Deputy Head: Student Welfare and Progress) and our Counselling teams, who support our students both in their Wellbeing and in their planning for, and applications to, university. As you can see, we have two new Careers and Higher Education Counsellors who will be working with Mr Will, our Deputy Head: Senior Studies, Ms Nikki, Mr Jon and our team of 27 Senior Studies Tutors and Support Tutors to work with our Senior Studies students.
During the summer, many of you will have seen the video of Bjorn, one of last year’s Year 13 students, celebrating his fantastic IB Diploma Programme results, with Bjorn achieving a perfect score of 45 points, including Level 7s in all six of his Higher and Standard Level subjects and A grades for both his Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge.
Bjorn joined St Andrews in Year 7, and has worked very hard throughout his time at the school, alongside our Learning Support Department, to overcome the challenges created by his ADHD and dyslexia, always aiming to “be the best he can be”. You can read more about Bjorn, including his Top Tips for students, on the school’s website.
Bjorn was just one of 19 students in the Class of 2021 to achieve 40 points or more - a fantastic achievement for all of these students after studying the IB Diploma Programme through two very challenging years. We are very pleased both with these results for the highest-attaining students and with the results for the Year Group as a whole, with 95% of the students studying the full IB Diploma achieving this, with an average points score of 35 points. Both of these figures are our best ever and significantly above world averages - excellent results for an inclusive IB Diploma Programme in an inclusive school.
More recently, last year’s Year 11 students received their (I)GCSE grades last Thursday. Again, these are our best ever results, both in terms of the number of students achieving 5 or more A*-C grades (91%) and the percentage of all grades awarded that were A or above (48%), with 39 students from last year’s Year 11 achieving an average grade of A or higher.
I will talk more about our fantastic (I)GCSE and IBDP grades in the forthcoming Parents’ Information Evenings that take place over the next two weeks. During these Evenings you will hear more information about the High School from me, Ms Jen (Senior Deputy Head: Teaching and Learning), Mr Andrew and your son/daughter’s Head of Year, as well as having an opportunity to meet your son/daughter’s Tutor.
These will take place on the following dates:
I look forward to seeing you at these events, and to another great year in High School.
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!
