Dear DCIS Parents,
This is the 19th Newsletter I have written at Dover Court and I think I am going to start this one in a similar vein to the previous 18. It has been an extremely busy but successful half term. Many of our teams worked through the summer to get the new Secondary Building and the Sports Hall ready for the new school year and we have been delighted by the response from students, parents and staff. There is still a little work to be done on the Sports Hall and this will be completed over the half term holiday. I’d like to thank all members of the school community, especially the PE team, for their flexibility and understanding while we worked around the logistics of our new buildings. The school year started with some phenomenal results from last year’s Years 11 and 13. As I wrote in my recent blog we do need to be wary of overall averages but we were delighted that we were above the World average for the IBDP and the UK average for GCSE. There are some great individual stories behind the headlines and our 10 graduates from Year 13 are now successfully onto their next exciting challenge.
The new Sports Hall hasn’t impacted on our Sports programme yet but we have had a very successful start to the year. We have had record numbers of students attending the trials for the FOBISIA, NAE Games and other teams and we have had some great results in this season’s ACSIS fixtures to date. We sneaked in the Sports Days around the weather just before half term which were hotly contested in all year groups.
We’ve had a full set of local trips already this half term. I have enjoyed talking to children about their exciting visits to local museums and other areas of interest that Singapore has to offer. Our Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition hit the first hazy weekend in 3 years but they managed to get through most of their challenges. Further afield our Secondary World Scholars Cup trip to Manila was extremely successful and 9 students have qualified for the final stage at Yale later in the term. We’ve recently partnered with International SOS who have augmented our staff training and provide crucial planning and back up for all our international trips. More details will be available in specific trip information.
Our Performing Arts have really benefited from the new facilities afforded to them in the Secondary building. We have long had a track record of some outstanding pieces of work from drama, music and art and we look forward to seeing this continue. We introduced Dance with the support of Juilliard last year and Ms Dodson did a brilliant job of starting this development. Ms Hughes has taken this over and we welcome our second Juilliard dance artist to DCIS in November.
It has been lovely to see so many parents at our various events; coffee mornings, information sessions, parents consultations or the Parent Support Network. We welcome (suitably badged!) parents to use our Lounge at all times and I’m really pleased that this is being used more extensively. The DCA AGM was extremely well attended and I continue to be grateful for the support of the co-chairs, the executive and the volunteers for the plethora of activities they run each year. The DCA have also been instrumental in the feedback they supply – the recent improvements in lost property management are based upon discussions with them.
