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Week Ahead

The Week Ahead 19 January 2017

30 Mar 2017
한국어
中文

Dear Parents,

Thank you to those parents who were able to attend our School Development Presentation on Monday.  We were also delighted to welcome our guest speakers for the evening, Dr Ahmed Hussain, Director of Schools for Wellington China, and Mr Simon Ruscoe-Price, Director of Language for the Wellington College China group.  Both these gentlemen are very experienced educators and former headteachers.  Dr Hussain spoke very informatively concerning international school trends and educational skills for the 21st Century, with China now playing a lead role on this stage; Mr Ruscoe-Price then delivered a survey of the educational research demonstrating how learning two (or more) languages at the same time accelerated progress in both, provided strong development of the native language was encouraged at home as well as in School;  and I then amplified on our Tianjin context, including detail on how our pupils in the Nest, from next year, will experience the UK Early Years curriculum through a planned first-language learning model (‘direct method’), in both English and Mandarin, rather than a translational model, which, over time, will strengthen learning and progress in both languages. This is a research-based approach to strengthening language acquisition in a complementary way between English and Mandarin. Such an approach has also been shown to have a significant impact on cognitive development and pupil performance throughout their time in school. This approach we feel allows us to fulfil our vision for creating an international community of well-rounded pupils prepared to be successful in an ever-changing global society. To achieve this aim we are committed to providing the very highest standards of professional learning and development programmes for our staff. 

My colleagues across the School are looking forward to our Wellington College Annual Review in early March.  Their confidence in this is strongly rooted for a number of reasons, including: the range of Commendations we received in our CIS Accreditation Visit Report last month; our improved use of progress and attainment data for focused learner interventions where needed; the College’s improved public exam results; and the strengthening of our pastoral structures and procedures this year, for both Senior School tutors and Junior School class teachers.  We would very much like to hear your feedback on the College’s progress in these and many more areas as we go forward this term, so we do hope you will be able to help us with our 2017 parent questionnaire survey next week, following our survey this week of our pupils’ views.  We will share the results of our surveys with the Annual Review Team as well as our parent body.

It was also a pleasure to welcome so many Year 9 parents to Tuesday's IGCSE Options evening.  We also hope to see many more of you for tomorrow afternoon’s Chinese New Year Fair, the culmination of a week of special Chinese cultural activities across the College.

With best wishes to all our Wellington families. 

Michael Higgins,
Master

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