TES British Secondary & High School Section - NewsLetter

ESC Newsletter Issue 1, August 2014 Coming up this month: Welcome from the BSHS Head  4 September: Information Evening  8 September: Autumn Festival Chrysta Garnett, Head of British Secondary and High School Section  10 September: H4 University Info Evening  19 September: ESCPA Meeting Inside this issue: University Counsellor 5 IB News 6 SARP Project 7 ESC PA 9 Sports News 12 New Staff 15 And much more! August 2014 In our first ESC Newsletter of the year, we welcome new staff members joining us across key curriculum areas to the TES family. Please enjoy their introductions on pages 15-18. We look forward to working with them in the coming years and seeing the fantastic work they will do with our young people. We also welcome back Ms Papps and Ms Tsai after their recent maternity leave and congratulate them on the births of their children. Also, heart-felt congratulations to Ms Drag (formerly Ms Brown) on her summer wedding! I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate our ‘Class of 2014’ graduating students on their phenomenal IB achievements this year. Their perseverance and commitment paid off with the best IB results ever! Our average IBDP grade now stands at 5.47, which is well above the world average and a significant im- provement on previous years. We maintained our average IB Diploma score of 34 from last year and in total 53 students passed the Diploma. Likewise, our H2 students deserve a special mention for their IGCSE results: 360 of the grades achieved were A*/A, which represents a very impressive collective academic achievement, with 91.5% of students this year gaining 5 or more A*- C grades. I am very excited to report recent developments regarding our new ESC Sports Facility in Yangmingshan. Building work started during the summer, in preparation for what will be an impressive new extension of our current sports facilities. The new venue will feature a larger astro-turf soccer pitch, tennis courts and fitness suite. We hope to be able to have students using the centre later in Term 1. An important upcoming date for your diaries: on September 4th, 6:30 – 8:00 pm, we will be hosting a KS3, IGCSE and IB Information Evening. We welcome all parents to attend and find out more information about their child’s curriculum pathway. Our ESC Newsletter will now be a little more interactive and ‘on the shelf’ in our usual website archive as well as at http://tesconnectfour.org/