A Warm Welcome – Principal’s Message

Dear South Island Parents,

I would like to offer a warm welcome to new SIS parents and welcome back to our established community.

The year has started on a really positive footing (despite all the rain!). New Year 7 students have been wonderfully lively and engaged immediately in the life of the School. We also have a number of new students in other Year Groups who have been made to feel very welcome. School numbers are very healthy, we have more than 1,400 students enrolled at the start of Year and we are pretty close to capacity in all year groups.

Our new staff members have had a rather challenging introduction to Hong Kong – the first day of their induction was a T8 welcome – hopefully the weather is settling into a more normal pattern for late August and all of our new teachers are making a very impressive start.

It has been a good summer for the School. Our IB results have been published elsewhere but re-marks since the results came out have taken us just a fraction below our best ever scores and two more students were able to secure 45 points – making a record breaking total of FOUR at SIS in 2016. I was just as proud of the fact that we secured 100% Pass rate for the first time ever and that over 91% of all the candidates scored more than 30 points. The BTEC results were excellent with students graduating to really strong Universities in the UK and elsewhere.  It was a really outstanding Year Group for its closeness and compassion and the Class of 2016 were well rewarded for their efforts.

If you have been to the School this Term you will have seen our renovated reception area, which looks impressive. My thanks to our PTA for their support of this project. We have also completely renovated the School Refectory and this seems to have been a very popular move with our students. It looks really nice – do pop up and have a look if you are passing. I’m glad to say that we were also able to invest in a renovation to our Learning Support Unit, an enhancement richly deserved by the wonderful students who spend all or part of their time in this area of the School and enrich our community every day.

This time next year we will be launching our 40th Birthday celebrations (I wish it was me celebrating 40!) so look out for more about this over the months to come.

My best wishes to all of our South Island students and families for an exciting and learning-filled year ahead.

Graham Silverthorne