Celebrating the 2021-22 Academic Year and wishing you all the best for your holidays

Dear Parents and Guardians of DBIS Secondary students,

I am writing to you to both celebrate all of your children’s fantastic achievements throughout this academic year and wish you all the very best for the summer holidays.

This last term, as well as the rest of the academic year, has certainly been a busy one. Our students have been actively involved in a wide range of activities both in and out of the classroom, and I would like to take this opportunity to mention a few of them.

Our leadership opportunities and student leadership team have grown throughout the academic year, and we were pleased to share some of these developments with you at the end of the first term. This term, we have elected our Head Perfects for 2022–23: Sam Pearson and Lucy Divers. Both Sam and Lucy have excelled in their roles as Year 12 Prefects this year. Sam has been one of our two Prefects for House Leadership, and Lucy was our Prefect for Creativity. There is a real advantage in both of them taking on their roles at this early stage as they are able to ensure that we can start the very start of term 1 next academic year on the front foot.

Another important area for us has been our Houses and encouraging positive and supportive competition between each of those Houses throughout the academic year. The House Captains in Year 11, as well as the Shadow House Captains in Year 10, have done a lot this year to ensure that students feel they belong to their respective Houses and that they have opportunities to work together in healthy competition with their peers. This is such an important area for our students, who have now elected their peers for the role of House Captain next year. The incoming House Captains have already been active in their new roles, supporting the running of House events during the school day today, Thursday 30th June. They have been ably supported by our colleagues who have taken on the new role of Heads of House and who will guide and support our House Captains to take on increased responsibility for various aspects of school leadership and service that they are passionate about.

Our new House teams are:

Typhoon. House Captains – Benji Broughton and Haley Yuen. Head of House – Mr Jack Piggott

Thunder. House Captains – Sebastien Wilde and Phoenix Broderick. Head of House – Mrs Anais Fenning

Lightning. House Captains – William Ross and Diti Dubey. Head of House – Mr Chris Reinhardt

Storm. House Captains – Matthew Russell and Francesca Sigston. Head of House – Susanne Clark

 

We are passionate about continuing to grow the opportunities for student leadership and service across the whole of the school and will be actively focused on opportunities for supporting our children to take increased ownership of this in 2022–23.

There have been many areas throughout the last term and academic year where our students have excelled. One area that our Year 7–9 students tackled with enthusiasm was the STEAM design challenge at the start of June, in which they worked together to redesign the Secondary School outdoor space. The intention is to re-energise these areas, and the best design ideas will be implemented in January 2023. The students focused on community, inclusivity and building connections with other phases of the school. They had to consider costings and design functionality, as well as ensure that their approaches were practical for the available space. They demonstrated many of the DBIS Learner Profile attributes throughout the challenge, from being ‘Creative Thinkers’ as they thought about all of the different opportunities that they had to be ‘Problem Solvers’ as they worked within the generous but realistic budget. The students also demonstrated that they were ‘Effective Collaborators’ and ‘Confident Communicators’ as they worked together in their groups to decide on an approach that they were all happy with. These designs were then fed back on by students from Year 6 to Year 10, and this feedback will play a vital role in the next stages of the project as we look to implement changes in the coming months.

Our Year 7–9 students have also completed their Discovery projects recently. The students worked independently, often in small teams, to explore their chosen areas during their Discovery lessons. They also tackled their own personal challenges, such as time management and working with others collaboratively and effectively. The Discovery projects were shared with teachers, peers and parents recently in celebration of the students’ achievements and personal growth.

Our current Year 10 students have recently had their first set of mock examinations, and parents will have received their children’s related reports earlier this week. These were an important opportunity for the students to gain valuable experience in taking IGCSE-style exams and to reflect on what they have learnt. This will help them to be even better prepared for their official mock exams in Year 11 as well as their final IGCSE examinations at the end of the next academic year.

At the start of the 2020–21 academic year, we introduced academic targets for all students in each of their subject areas. These were designed to support our students to take increased ownership of their own learning journey and are regarded by renowned academic experts, including world-famous educationalist John Hattie, as being one of the most effective ways to increase students’ educational successes. This academic year, we intentionally built upon what we introduced last academic year by switching to ‘aspirational target’ setting for our Year 10–13 students and also introducing personal goals for our Year 7–9 students.

In recent weeks, we have said farewell to our graduating class of 2022 and eagerly await their results in August, along with those of our current Year 11 and 12 students. Our Year 13s will be going off to various opportunities all over the world, with the significant majority going on to further study in their areas of interest. We wish them all the very best for their future journeys.  

Before I sign off and wish everyone all the very best for their summer, I would like to offer my thanks to all for your support throughout this academic year. One particularly valuable part was the responses from over 100 parents about the plans that we had in February for online learning as this played a significant role in shaping our provision. Thank you to everyone who responded, and thank you in particular to the volunteers in the Parent Focus Group, who played an incredibly valuable role in sharing views from the wider community and helping me to write the questionnaire that went to all Secondary School parents.

For the significant majority of you who are returning next academic year, I would like to wish you all a very enjoyable holiday with your children, and for those who are moving on this summer, we wish you and your children all the very best for the future.

Kind regards,

Simon Oakley

Head of Secondary

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