Principal's Blog

We’ve enjoyed a great end to the week with our annual Wai Kru celebrations. Arranged beautifully by our Thai Studies department, our children took their opportunity to show their gratitude and respect to their teachers. 

We had a fantastic start to the week with a special assembly for the International Day of Peace. We sang together and shared poems to celebrate and inspire peace.

Sandwiched in between, all the City Campus staff team gave our ‘official’ warm welcome to Dr Tim Nuttall as our Group Director of Schools. 

Dr Nuttall was the Rector and Executive Head of St Stithians College in Johannesburg – one of South Africa’s top independent schools. Prior to assuming the leadership of St Stithians seven years ago, his 30-year career in South Africa has spanned tertiary and secondary education – as an Associate Professor of History at the University of Natal, a Deputy Head at St Andrew’s College and Head of Somerset College. He has been actively committed to advancing education in South Africa’s new democracy. After attending school and university in South Africa, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.  

Tim began working with us in May via digital means. It is wonderful that he is able to be based with us in person in Bangkok for a few months, before he moves to China to open three new Shrewsbury International Schools over the next few years.

We all feel very excited to welcome Dr Nuttall as our Director, and look forward to working with him.

 FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

This week, our Children’s Forum has been transformed into a magical space, with children under 3 years old in mind. We are well underway with assessments for families seeking an Early Years place at City Campus for August 20201. We have already seen a wonderful cohort of children, who we look forward to joining us in a year's time.

We were also delighted to safely relaunch our Shrewsbury Starfish playgroup on Wednesday. It was fantastic to see so many children enjoying our creative open-ended provision. Families are invited to join us every Wednesday morning - registration available HERE. 

We are looking forward to extending our Shrewsbury Starfish programme over the course of the next few weeks - watch this space. 

We were very busy this week in our Aquatics Centre, as trials began for this year’s Swim Team from Years 2 to 6. Lots of cheering and encouragement came from parents and staff in the stands. 

At City Campus, we remain committed to providing our students with opportunities to enhance their learning through the use of innovative and leading-edge educational technologies. Parents in Year 4, 5 and 6 valued yesterday's important presentation, related to the BYOD programme (Bring Your Own Device) with e-safety and the signing of an acceptable use policy at the heart of this. 
 
FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

This week has, as always, been a busy one. 

All our parents have been into school to meet the child’s class teachers - we’ve enjoyed a wonderful positive buzz around the campus every day as each year group in turn hosted the event safely. 

We also held a Coffee Morning for brand new parents in our community, to introduce them to key members of staff, to enjoy each other's company and ensure they knew how to access our Library.  The most important gift we can give our children is to surround them with books and make time to read for pleasure everyday.  

I am pleased to report I have seen a happy parent community here at City Campus, who are positive and confident about the year ahead.

Our children have really settled beautifully into their routines and have been excited by their “You-Time” opportunities which all began this week.  

Classes are transforming their year group bases, and other spaces around the school, to be creative and stimulating places which reflect topics and learning ......the Year 3 rainforest is looking particularly impressive, and our Early Years Hub has a sensory calming feel to it this week.

Again, I have seen happy children, who are positive and excited about  the year ahead.

Teachers are enjoying their new classes and can’t believe how quickly the children have managed to return to school after being away for so long. The children’s enthusiasm, politeness and wonderful contributions has been inspiring for us all.

And so too we have happy teachers, who are positive and enthusiastic about the year ahead.
 
FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

What a wonderful start to Term 1 2020...to have all the children back in school has been an absolute delight.
 
We started the new year focusing on our Value of the Month, which is ‘Community’. In my assembly this week, we discussed who was part of our growing City Campus community and focused on what is important to us as a school family.

The children shared their views and ideas - kindness and respect were the top of the list, along with with sharing, helping each other, being inclusive, solving problems together, smiling and greeting each other, good manners, showing empathy and understanding.

Our City Campus starfish also came into play, as we all agree that a starfish has become a symbol representing what we care about in our community, coupled with the important message in the starfish parable that every small act of kindness makes a difference and we know there are ripple effects. 

We are  a strong and growing community who understand that we can and we do make a difference.

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” (Margaret Wheatley, author)
 
FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

After a busy summer on campus with many potential families visiting, we are now very much looking forward to returning to school for a new academic year.

It is with real pleasure and excitement that all our new teachers from the UK arrived safely a couple of weeks ago. Despite the strict quarantine measures in place, our full induction program has been taking place - via creative, effective and live Zoom sessions delivered by our staff team. 

New staff based in Bangkok have been in school for a few days to receive their training, get to know each other and familiarise themselves with the school site.

We are very much looking forward to all our new and returning staff and children filling the campus with chatter, laughter and fun as our community grows and moves positively forward into our third year of operation.

Our team is ready and raring to go.

 
FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

It really has been the best outcome we could have hoped for, to end Term 3 in school with the children. We’ve had so much fun having the whole school community back on site.

We’ve been able to ensure all children have transition activities and introductions to their new class teachers and are ready for August 2020

We’ve been able to hold our first ever Year 6 graduation ceremony which was a true celebration of the uniqueness of our Year 6 children - taking inspiration from Maya Angelou's poem 'Still I Rise…’

We will miss our founding Year 6’s enormously but we look forward to seeing them blossom further at our Riverside campus and beyond.

Here at City Campus, we will be busy preparing our site to welcome visitors to tour the school during the summer. We are now able to open our gates to prospective families who have been waiting patiently to visit our beautiful campus.

Our new staff will arrive in August - they are so excited to be joining Shrewsbury City Campus…..

We also plan to have a community event toward the end of August, so please look out for more details.

Today, on our last day of term, I would like to wish you all a calm, peaceful summer break - a time for families and fun and relaxation.

I will be relaxing with my family and will be taking a break from my blog until August.

In the meantime, please join us in celebrating what has been an unprecedented yet rewarding term. 

READ TERM IN REVIEW

Take care everyone and thank you….
 
FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

All our children are now in school full-time, and they are continuing to enjoy their learning and friendships. They are also loving being able to eat the delicious lunches in our dining space, especially today as it’s ‘ice cream Friday’! We are of course having to apply physical distancing at lunchtimes, but nevertheless there has been a wonderful atmosphere amongst our community in our dining hall and in our playgrounds. The children have adapted so brilliantly to our new safety regimes.

This week we have hosted a number of transition meetings for our families, as our students prepare to move into a new year group in August. The children have had transition lessons and found out who will be their new class teacher next year - very exciting times ahead. 

It is encouraging to be looking to the future with optimism as restrictions are being lifted further in Thailand with business and other activities being allowed to resume from 1st July.

At City Campus, once the term has ended next week, we will allow prospective families to come onto the campus for site tours. After months of virtual tours and events, which have nonetheless been successful and rewarding, we are very much looking forward to meeting prospective parents face-to-face and welcoming visitors to our school. 

FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

What a fabulous week it has been, as our children return safely to school.

Our Year 2’s through to Year 6 arrived on campus full of smiles and excitement to see their friends and teachers again.

It is amazing how quickly the children have adjusted to the new safety precautions that we have put in place. Students have been very mature and sensible, we are very proud of their responsible behaviour and their resilience.

Our teachers have once again shown their creativity and adaptability to a new way of teaching in school, ensuring the children receive high quality lessons alongside important wellbeing breaks.

We are looking forward to welcoming the rest of the school back on Monday when our EY1, EY2 and Year 1 children return.

This week we also held webinars via Zoom for all our new families who will join us in August 2020. It has been interesting and exciting to meet them, answer their questions and prepare them for their child to start with us at Shrewsbury. 

Enjoy your weekend everyone. 

FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

We have received confirmation from the Ministry of Education (MoE) this afternoon that international schools are permitted to open next week. We have been preparing for the safe return of our students for many weeks. Representatives from the Ministry of Education (pictured far right) have visited City Campus earlier this week to inspect our facilities in preparation for the children’s safe return. It was concluded that we were ready. We are very much looking forward to welcoming some of our students back on site. 

In other news, it was a real pleasure to welcome our new Director of Schools, Tim Nuttall, to his first Board Governors meeting at City Campus (via Zoom). 

This was our last meeting for this academic year and we were split across the world in boardrooms here in Bangkok, in Shrewsbury UK and in South Africa. 

Although we missed the full experience of all the Governors being with us physically  our meeting was productive, informative, positive and constructive. 

The Governors were particularly keen to hear about our transition to online learning, the challenges, the solutions, the feedback from our children and parents and of course our plans for future reopening. The Board were pleased to hear that we are fully staffed for August 2020 and that we had  secure plans in place for the safe start of Term 1. 

Much praise was given to the whole staff team and the wider community at City Campus for navigating through these challenging times together. The Governors also congratulated us on our recent successful CIS inspection.

To end on a musical note, I would like to invite you to watch our first of this term’s Online Recitals. It really is a pleasure to watch our young musicians perform so professionally. Our value of the month is Success, and our featured pianists have certainly embodied this through keeping up their schedule of practising, delivering some impressive performance, and sharing heartfelt messages of support for their friends and the school community. 

Sit back, relax and enjoy the recital here. 

FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER

Our beautiful campus is ready and waiting for our students to return. Of course, we hope schools are given permission to re-open soon, and we continue to await further advice from the Ministry of Education. 

In the meantime, our strong home learning programme for our students continues. On Monday, I (virtually) introduced our children to June's Value of the Month. We are focusing and reflecting on the value of ‘Success’.

Success is measured in many different ways and it is important for us to acknowledge this. It can be about reaching your goals or your dreams; it can be measured through exams and grades; it can be measured through your emotions and how you feel; it can be small steps or huge ones. 

At different times and in different situations how ‘Success’ looks, feels or sounds will mean different things to different people. 

What we do know is that success is determined by hard work, persistence and commitment. I also strongly believe that success is very much linked to the two previous values that we celebrated respectively in April and May - Courage and Resilience.

When I think about all our children, parents and teachers at the moment and I see how hard they are working and how well they have adjusted to this new life online I am amazed. I see our truly inspiring work and commitment to making Term 3 count and be a success.

This week in our City Campus community, we are also feeling a sense of  ‘success’ following the announcement that we have been granted membership with the Council of International Schools (CIS). 

CIS praised the school for the rapid progress we have made in a relatively short period of time with growing student enrolments, a broad and rich curriculum, and a range of programmes to support student learning and wellbeing.

City Campus’s key observations and special commendations from CIS can be read in more detail here. 

Our successful online Admissions Events programme continues. This morning, our Early Years leadership team presented 'An Introduction to Early Years at City Campus. Many families joined us via Zoom to hear about our provision and our approach for our 3-5 year old students. 

For this particular age group, myself and Ms Cath (the school’s Head of Early Years) also did a Q&A for families earlier in the year. We addressed some frequently asked questions HERE. 

Places remain limited in all year groups. My team is currently delivering online assessments for families that have applied for a place at City Campus in August 2020.

Have a safe and relaxing weekend, everyone.  
 

FOLLOW THE PRINCIPAL ON TWITTER