Dear parents,
What a strange term it has been, I think it’s safe to say that this has been the strangest term of my 10 year teaching career to date! I would like to take this opportunity to thank all Year 11 parents for the support you have given at home to your children during this time. It has been invaluable to us as teachers and without it we would not have made the progress that we have with our online learning programme.
I know that you and the students have all been waiting for an update from examinations boards about exactly what will happen and we are still waiting for some of our examination boards to verify this but CAIE have stated that they will require as much evidence as possible to support grades entered for students this year. The evidence can take the form of the following; mock exams, coursework, lesson assignments and assessments. Although CAIE have also stated that we are not required to complete new assessments if this is not possible we are also very aware that students have made significant progress in their learning over the past few months and therefore many subject teachers will be organising further assessments with students in the weeks after the Easter break. We predict that all other examination boards are likely to do something very similar so as we move forwards into a new term it is important that we, parents and school, as a team are reinforcing the same message to our young people; the Easter break should be used for revision of subject content, online learning will continue after the Easter break and all work undertaken is important as it can count as evidence towards the grades entered for students by subject teachers.
At the beginning of this academic year we requested that all students remain in Hong Kong until 24th June as this is the final day of term and is the contingency day for examinations. Obviously, with no examinations running this year some parents have asked me if this date still stands but until we have some deadlines and dates set by examination boards with regards to entry of grades I’m afraid I simply cannot tell you precisely. As soon as we have further information about when we have to enter grades and when online learning for Year 11 can stop we will let you know.
There are some 2 important events that Year 11 have been looking forward to all year which we are going to have to postpone until we know when we are able to come back into school as normal; our graduation ceremony and prom. Again, as soon as we have some confirmation on when/if these events can run we will let you know about these also.
I would now like to pass on a message about health and safety that has been raised by a member of our community. It has been reported that there have been a number of school-age children behaving dangerously on a building rooftop in DB during this closure period. While there is no suggestion that these incidents necessarily relate to students at DBIS, it seems prudent to take this opportunity to ask you all to remind your children to be safe and sensible when out in the community, particularly in light of the Easter break coming up. It would be greatly appreciated if parents could remind students to be safe when out and to avoid situations where other young people are behaving inappropriately.
Finally, I would like to wish you all a happy and safe Easter break and thank you again for your incredible support during this difficult time.
If you have any further questions please feel free to email me.
Thank you
Emma Cerrone
Year 11 Year Group Leader