Principal's message

Dear Parents,

It has been another positive week at school with all year levels attending at least one day. As you may be aware, in positive news the EDB has confirmed that following the Chinese New Year break, we can increase the number of students attending to one-third of the school’s capacity. Due to our capacity at KGV, this means it is likely that each year level can attend school every second day after the CNY break. We are planning that students will attend at least 5 days across each of our 10-day timetable cycle.

We will also revert back to our daily timings, where on each day of face to face attendance, students will complete periods 1 to 4, then travel home over a longer lunch break, and then participate in a taught online lesson in period 5. 

We are working through the timetable scheduling for the first few weeks after the CNY break and we will communicate the finalised plan in our newsletter on Wednesday 10 February, next week. We will also take some time to consider the other option reported in the media, which involves COVID -19 testing of all staff. We will keep you updated on this.

In other big news, two of the Year 11 (I)GCSE Exam Boards (Edexcel and AQA) have confirmed that exams have been cancelled. We will now work closely with these exam boards to ensure we provide the evidence needed for all our students to be awarded a (I)GCSE grade. The (I)GCSE Cambridge exam board has just confirmed that they intend to run their exams this year. We will update parents and students as more information comes to hand. Year 11 parents can see more information from VP Mr Carrell in the Year 11 newsletter. 

In breaking news, the IB has confirmed that it will offer a dual route model for the May 2021 Diploma Programme examination session: the examination route and a non-examination route. The IB is working with schools to determine which of the two pathways is best for their region. Further details will be released in the coming days. Here is the link to the full IBO announcement on their public website: https://ibo.org/news/news-about-the-ib/update-for-may-2021-diploma-programme-and-career-related-programme-examination-session/

To help Year 11 and 13 students maximise their academic progress and exam performance, our teachers are offering over 40 separate 4 hour tutorials over the CNY holiday period and on most Saturdays leading up to the end of Term 2. Students will be contacted by their subject teachers, inviting them to the tutorials.

Thank you to all parents who participated in the recent Year 7 and Year 13 Learning Reviews. I know the staff really appreciated sharing with parents the academic progress and attitude to learning of our students. 

I sincerely thank all our parents again, for your understanding and resilience during this time. The current uncertainty creates increased pressure and anxiety for ‘your child, our student’. Maintaining a sense of optimism and positivity that ‘we have this’ and together we can support each other, is a strong message to consistently give our young people.

I hope you have a great weekend, and I look forward to providing you all with a Newsletter update on Wednesday 10 February, next week.

Kind Regards,

Mark Blackshaw

Year 11 Message

Year 11 students will be receiving feedback from their mock exams and it is very important that they think carefully about the advice and suggestions for improvements. Before the Lunar New Year break, we intend to share a summary of results and feedback with you.

(I)GCSE exam update
We have had news in the last week from our three exam boards for Year 11.
It is now confirmed that only the following exams are confirmed to run; Business Studies, Chinese, Computer Science, Drama, English, Geography, ICT, Korean, Music, Sports Studies and World Literature.

For subjects with cancelled exams, we are waiting for details of how grades will be awarded. These details will be shared with you as soon as we know, however they will be based on evidence drawn from assessments.

The most important message here which we will be reinforcing with Y11 students is that there will be assessments in the remainder of the year that will affect their final grades for all their subjects so all students need to continue to study, revise and prepare as normal. Those students who undertake coursework in any subject should also remain committed to this unless they are informed otherwise by their subject teachers.

Kind Regards, Tim Carrell

tim.carrell@kgv.edu.hk

Year 10 Message

We are really looking forward to seeing our Year 10 students more often following the Lunar New Year break. We hope they are excited to be spending more time in school.

A virtual learning review is scheduled for Year 10 students and parents on Thursday 4 March from 2:30pm. Bookings will open in the week back after the break and we encourage parents to make a 10 minute booking with teachers.

Elevate provide excellent parent webinars that help parents understand and support their child during exam years. They are offered exclusively to our parents. Last Monday was "Motivation" and the replay of the webinar can be viewed here. On February 23rd, a webinar on Time Management will be held at 6:30pm. You can register for the live webinar here.

Kind Regards, Tim Carrell

tim.carrell@kgv.edu.hk

Message from the Year 7 Team

Dear Parents

Thank you to all parents who supported this week’s Learning Review. It was a pleasure to meet so many of you and to talk about the progress your child has made during this first term at KGV School. We have been so proud of the way our Year 7 students have embraced online learning and grown in confidence over the last term and the Learning Review gave teachers the opportunity to connect with parents to share their feedback.

If you haven’t done so already, please can you spend a couple of minutes completing our feedback form to enable us to hear about your experience and how we can enhance our provision for future events. Please click here for the link to the feedback form.

A reminder too that our curriculum website is still accessible for you to look at your leisure and see how our curriculum is mapped out across Year 7. Please click here to access the website.

Finally, we look forward to seeing our Year 7 students again on Wednesday next week. Wednesday 10 February is a dress casual day for Year 7 students. There will be an opportunity to make a donation to our school charities should you wish to. We will finish at 1:25pm next Wednesday for our CNY break.

Have a great weekend.

The Year 7 Team.

Message from Year 8 Team

Dear Year 8 Parents

 

Students have one more face-to-face learning day on Monday 8 February. This is a dress casual day for Year 8 students, with an opportunity to make a donation to our school charities should you wish to. We will finish at 1:25pm next Wednesday for our CNY break.

 

Year 8 Learning Review - first week back after CNY break.

Wednesday 24 February is the date for the Learning Review, which will run from 2:30pm - 6:30pm. All parents will be able to access the appointment system from Wednesday 10 February to schedule times to see teachers. Please note the following points;

1. Period 5 lessons on Wednesday 24 February will be ‘asynchronous’, giving students the opportunity to join parents in the Learning Review appointments.

2. From now until Wednesday 10 February, subject teachers will be booking appointments with parents they need to see on the Learning Review evening. As parents you are able to see these appointments appearing in your appointment system on LIONEL, through the ESF App. Should you see an appointment appear at a time which is not convenient for you, please can you email the teacher directly to re-arrange.

3. From Wednesday 10 February, the appointment system will open to parents and you will be able to make appointments with the teachers you would like to see. The appointment system will close at 6pm on Tuesday 23 February.

4. Please be aware that the system puts a break between parent booking times, meaning you cannot have two meetings back-to-back. Teachers, on the other hand, have meetings back-to-back.

5. These meetings will be held virtually, using Google Meet. You will not be ‘admitted’ into an appointment until the exact scheduled meeting time (as teachers are likely to see be speaking to parents from an earlier appointment)

6. Please have questions ready to ask your teachers, who will focus specifically on your child. 

7. General questions about curriculum and units still to be studied, will be answered in our Curriculum Information Talks. Mr Shiel, our MYP Coordinator is working with our Heads of Departments to collate a suite of videos for you to watch, which outline what we study in Year 8. We will share this with you next week.

8. Specific teacher information

   1. Mr Sabnani has taken over Mr Hattam’s DT teaching group. He is still getting to know the students and will be contacting individual parents as and when necessary over the course of the year. As a result, Mr Sabnani is not available on the booking system.

   2. Ms Barton and Ms Ya o have just started maternity leave and won’t appear on the system.

   3. Where your child has a main English teacher and a teacher who supervises during the Reading Centre lesson, only the main English teacher will be available.

A lot of information here! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks and have a great week

 

The Year 8 Team

Message from Year 9 Team

Dear Parents

Students have one more face-to-face learning day on Tuesday 9 February. This is a dress casual day for Year 9 students, with an opportunity to make a donation to our school charities should you wish to . We will finish at 1:25pm next Wednesday for our CNY break.

All Year 9 students engaged extremely positively in their Community Project day this week. Students will now be meeting with their Community Project supervisor to discuss the following points

● Describe the communities they are a member of

● Share some of the needs they identified.

● Explain the need they researched in more detail.

● Share if they have any early ideas of what action they might take?

● Discuss as a group and decide on a focus for their project.

● Talk about the skills they are using/developing and share the evidence/entries in their Process Journal.

The next Community Project day is Wednesday 24 February. More details to follow next week.

 

Year 9 Core Options Evening: Message from Mr Ferriday

I would like to invite you to our online year 9 core options evening at 5pm on Monday 22 February. Click this Youtube Live link

During this meeting, we will explain the options process for Maths, Science and WIN time.

As we will be exploring the selection process and not the content found in each of these courses, I have provided links to the video summaries of each course below. These will need to be accessed using a KGV account.

Science Video

Maths Link

WIN link

I will be in touch again prior to the options evening with links to the online venue and a document where you can pre populate any questions that you might have.

Have a great weekend.

 

The Year 9 Team

Year 12 and Year 13 Message

Dear Parents,

Following a survey in January of over 3,000 schools in 152 countries, which indicated that many schools and students continue to face huge challenges nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and the successful roll-out of a similar model in our November 2020 exam series, the IB has confirmed that it will offer a dual route for the May 2021 Diploma Programme examination session: an examination route and a non-examination route. The IB is working with schools to determine which of the two pathways is best for their region: written examinations, where they can be administered safely, or an alternative route using a combination of internal assessment coursework and teacher-predicted grades, where they can’t. The IBO assure schools that they will take measures such as looking carefully at the grade boundaries alongside their external examiners, to ensure that they take account of disruptions in learning and teaching and other unusual circumstances that might have affected exam performance across the cohort.

Following the successful administering of the Mock Examinations in January at KGV and the current situation in Hong Kong, it is likely at this stage that IB Diploma examinations will go ahead in May 2021 at KGV. Therefore, it is vital that students continue to plan for these examinations.

Further details will be released in the coming days and we will continue to update you. In the meantime, here is the link to the full IBO announcement on their public website for your information: https://ibo.org/news/news-about-the-ib/update-for-may-2021-diploma-programme-and-career-related-programme-examination-session/

 

Chris Wightman

Learning Director: Head of Curriculum (Senior School)

IB Diploma & BTEC Coordinator

Key Dates

Wed 10 Feb: Last day of school before Term 2 mid-term break

Mon 22 Feb: First day of school after Term 2 mid-term break

Mon 22 Feb: Year 9 Core Optons Evening

Wed 24 Feb: Year 8 Learning Review

KGV Netball Academy

Dear Students and Parents,

Thank you to all the Year 7 families that joined the Netball Academy online information session. This is a very exciting opportunity for our student athletes to apply for.

The Netball Academy is open to all students who are striving to succeed in their sporting ambitions. The academy pathway focuses on Netball, however, all athletes are encouraged to apply as the programme focuses on developing well rounded and well educated athletes. Please note the Netball Academy is timetabled during students Physical and Health Education lessons as a Performance Pathway. It is built into the curriculum to empower our student athletes potential, offering them a balance of dedicated training time and athlete focussed theory lessons.

Presentation: KGV Netball Academy

Netball Academy Application: https://forms.gle/b8ncj2FGFzUQgd1C7

I look forward to reading student athlete applications.

Kind regards,

Anna Pinder

Careers & Guidance

The KGV Careers Office is sharing a lot of information on higher education via different channels/platforms.

• Our Career website is full of H.E. news & resources, scholarships, events, summer/enrichment programmes and many others. New items added this week include JAHK Workshop, Summer/Enrichment programmes around the world & scholarship offers.
• This calendar lists H.E. events and taster lectures offered by universities around the world and is updated regularly.
• We also share other H.E. news and information on our Facebook page. You can find us here.

From KGV Careers Team

ESF Year of the Ox Virtual Art Gallery and E-Card

To celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year, more than 300 students from 18 of our schools crafted imaginative greeting cards and artworks for our ESF Year of the Ox Virtual Art Gallery, which launched today (Friday, Feb 5) and runs until February 26. From colourful cartoons and nature-inspired collages to beautiful paintings and dynamic digital art - each thoughtful creation is a joy to behold. We hope you will join us in exploring this fantastic online exhibition and experiencing the remarkable creativity of our students. You can click here to visit the gallery. Each student’s artwork was also put forward to be our ESF Year of the Ox E-Card. ESF CEO Belinda Greer led a judging panel in the tough task of narrowing down the array of entries for a staff vote. I think you’ll agree the chosen artwork is fantastically festive. You can view and download the e-card from the ESF website. We hope you will enjoy sending this heart-warming card to your family and friends. Thank you and Kung Hei Fat Choy.

Our Remarkable Stories

Our Remarkable Stories

 

 

 

 

Our remarkable student Rhea loves doing anything related to theatre and is a fan of singing. One of her big hobbies is to take photographs and watch the sunset. Rhea likes bringing smiles to people's faces and in her spare time she shares tips for positivity and kindness on her Instagram page @positivity.happiness.kindness and @rhea_saxenas

 

Her article is a review of the Headspace Guide to Meditation on Netflix and is now available to read on SCMP's Young Post.

https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/entertainment/tv/article/3118870/headspace-guide-meditation-tv-review-netflix-show

Copyright © 2021 KING GEORGE V SCHOOL, All rights reserved.