Welcome to Semester 2 at BCIS! I hope you all had time to enjoy being with your children over the recent Winter break. I know from personal experience that having this opportunity to relax with our children, catch up and spend quality time together is precious.

We have begun what I am sure will be another busy and rewarding semester. Although we are very quickly approaching our Chinese New Year holiday, we remain, as always, very focused on our students and their learning. We have welcomed new students, and their families, to BCIS and hope our warm and welcoming environment provides a smooth transition into our community.

We are hearing, almost every day, exciting news from our Grade 12 students regarding their university acceptances for next year. This reminds me of the excitement, anticipation and anxiety that surrounds our senior students at this time of year and the need for us to continue to support them. I know that BCIS is a strong community, and that our teachers, students and parents are all eager to hear about our student successes in this area – we want to celebrate together! You will, therefore, be hearing more through our BCIS Communications about up to date university acceptance information so that you too can join in our celebration of our students. Watch this space!

At this time of year an important task for the leadership at BCIS is focusing on the recruitment of new teachers for the next school year. It may seem early in the business world, but in the international school world we work on this consistently from November until all of our hiring is done for the following year. As you know, our high-quality teachers are the backbone of our school, and we attract many excellent candidates from around the world due to BCIS' strong reputation in the international school community. We are also attending the Search Associates recruitment fair in Bangkok, as we have done for the past several years. Significant amounts of time are spent conducting interviews, connecting candidates with current staff, doing background checks and calling references, so it is extremely satisfying when we welcome our new staff in July each year for their orientation to BCIS, Beijing and China.

Our teachers continue to attend professional learning that has a direct impact on their teaching and student learning. This week we are welcoming back to BCIS a language expert, Eowyn Crisfield, who will work with staff in the ECC, ES and SS. Her work with our staff across the school will strengthen our whole-school approach to teaching and understanding the role of language. We understand the importance of continuing to keep abreast of educational developments, reflecting on our practice and planning future developments at BCIS. We will of course continue to also provide learning opportunities for our parents this semester through our Parents as Learners (PAL) workshops.

Let me take this opportunity to wish you all the best for 2020 and for the lunar new year. Please do remember that I am available either on the main campus, or the ECC campus, should you wish to meet with me. I do appreciate the opportunity to talk with our BCIS parents.

Kind regards,

Julie Lawton

Head of School