Dear Parents,

It was great to see our students back this week, energised and refreshed, ready for Term 3! We are working especially hard to support our Year 11 and 13 students, as they prepare for their upcoming examinations. Next Friday will be their last day of lessons before they move onto their study-leave and then exams. We have also begun to prepare for our Year 13 Graduation Ceremony, held across four nights from Monday 24 May to Thursday 27 May.

We are excited about restarting some extra-curricular activities for our students. In two weeks’ time, we will be running some extra-curricular activities before school. Students will be able to enrol in the activities that will start from 7:15 a.m. We would also like to thank all our parents for supporting our health and safety procedures, important for keeping our students and community safe, and to hopefully enable us to travel back towards some type of normality.

Last but not least, we would also like to wish our Muslim community a blessed and happy Ramadan.

Kind Regards

Mark Blackshaw

ELEVATE FREE PARENT WEBINAR SERIES

EMPOWERING YOU TO SUPPORT YOUR CHILD’S REVISION

Elevate is an award-winning organisation that has been working with our Year 12 students to help them become more effective learners. Your child’s ability to self-motivate, manage their time and prepare effectively will be a crucial factor to guarantee their success over the exam period.

Join Elevate for an exclusive webinar series where they will show you – as parents – the tools for maximising exam preparation time, eliminating procrastination, and maintaining wellbeing in the lead up to and during exams.

Registration is now open!

Have a great weekend.

A reminder that our Year 13 students official last day of lessons is next Friday 23 April. Of course, our teachers will remain available to support our students during timetabled lessons. 

Unfortunately, due to the current Government restrictions, we are not permitted to hold a single Year 13 Graduation ceremony this year.

We are, however, permitted to hold a Graduation ceremony for each of our four Houses on four separate evenings.

These will be held on the following dates:

Date                        House

24 May                   Crozier

25 May                   Nightingale

26 May                   Rowell

27 May                   Upsdell

Each Graduation will begin at 4:00 p.m..

Our official Graduation dinner has been provisionally booked for Friday 18 June. This can only proceed if Government restrictions allow.

Have a great weekend.

Term 2 summary
The Term 2 assessment summary will be available in Lionel on Monday and I will message parents about finding this in the CCF section. Our assessment system is live and you can access all assessment information as it happens, this will just be a summary putting all recent results on one page.
Your child's tutor will be meeting 1:1 over the next few weeks to discuss progress and identify areas for celebration or development.

Elevate Free Parent Webinar Series
Elevate is an award-winning organisation that has been working with our Year 10 students to help them become more effective learners. The next two webinars are on exam preparation. Elevate suggest that 80% of a student's grades is determined before they even walk into the exam room. That 80% = preparation. They will help you work with your child to develop a pre-exam roadmap to maximise their chances of success and keep overwhelm at bay. 
Register for the webinars here: https://get.elevatecoaching.info/sg/register

Assessments and exams
You will have received the full exam information pack this week and we have met with all Year 11 students to go over the examination procedures. Here is the link to the official exam timetable with venue, time and separate supervision details.

Post exam activities
Following the exam period, we are organising a series of in-school and online activities to give students a chance to begin preparing for next year and to engage in some of the experiences they have missed due to closures this year. Part of this will be some "Challenge Week" like activities. We will share details as the scheduling and activities are confirmed.

How will grading work this year?
The following Cambridge exam board subjects will be having external exams as usual. Business Studies, Chinese, Computer Science, Drama, English, Geography, ICT, Korean, Music, Sports Studies and World Literature.

As previously communicated, all other subjects will use a grade determination process. We have now received clear guidance about this process. Evidence from at least three assessments must be used to match student performance against grade descriptors (published by the exam board) for each subject. We are required to inform students/parents which assessments will be used and are required to keep the final grade confidential. Only evidence of actual performance in assessments can be used. We cannot take into account MLO scores or consider that a student had started to show improvement and may have continued to improve. We cannot enter into discussion with families regarding the grades they expect or hope for. The grade determination process will be quality assured within the school and externally by Pearson and AQA.
We are required to ensure that the distribution of grades is similar to when exams ran in years past. For example, we should have roughly the same proportion of grade 7, 8 and 9s as were awarded when exams last ran in 2017-2019. This year, exam boards will release results the week before school starts in August and your child may need support and reassurance if they do not get a grade they were hoping for.
Appeals are possible following the release of grades and we will inform families of this process at the time. More information can be found at the Pearson webpage for students, parents and carers.

Elevate Free Parent Webinar Series
Elevate is an award-winning organisation that has been working with our Year 10 students to help them become more effective learners. The next two webinars are on exam preparation. Elevate suggest that 80% of a student's grades is determined before they even walk into the exam room. That 80% = preparation. They will help you work with your child to develop a pre-exam roadmap to maximise their chances of success and keep overwhelm at bay. Register for the webinars here.

Dear Parents

Welcome back to Term 3! We hope you and your family had a lovely break. The students have certainly returned energised, refreshed and ready to tackle their final term in Year 7.

We have lots of our Year 7 students involved in leadership opportunities and they are making themselves and KGV proud. Over the holidays the Year 7 Transition Leaders came into school to talk to some of our Year 6 families and yesterday we had students helping out with KJS PYP exhibitions. 

Hopefully you will have seen news about some early morning co-curricular activities starting shortly. This is excellent news and I hope many of our Year 7s will sign up to these clubs.

Please watch out for an App message asking you to confirm your child’s Year 7 option choices. You will need to click the acknowledgement box.

Have a great weekend.
 

The Year 7 Team

Dear Parents

Welcome back to Term 3! We hope you and your family had a lovely break. The students have certainly returned energised, refreshed and ready to tackle their final term in Year 8.

Hopefully you will have seen news about some early morning co-curricular activities starting shortly. This is excellent news and I hope many of our Year 8s will sign up to these clubs.

We are currently responding to the requests we are receiving from you regarding option changes. Please can you email Mr Shiel (duncan.shiel@kgv.edu.hk) by Friday 23 April if you want to request a change. After this time, we will send you an App message for you to confirm your child’s language and creative arts choices for next year.

Have a great weekend.

The Year 8 Team.

Dear Parents

Welcome back to Term 3! We hope you and your family had a lovely break. The students have certainly returned energised, refreshed and ready to tackle their final term in Year 8.

Hopefully you will have seen news about some early morning co-curricular activities starting shortly. This is excellent news and I hope many of our Year 9s will sign up to these clubs.

Mr Tranter has been working through the requests we have received this week regarding changes to option choices. The deadline for changes was 3:20 p.m. today. We will let you know when these changes have been finalised.

Advance notice regarding the next Community Project (CP) Day, where students will spend the day focusing on their CP and not attend regular lessons.

Follow up Day 4 - Monday 26 April

• Final steps - Planning for Action

• Logistics – dates, times, how, what, with who?

• Planning a contingency – what will you do if the plan fails?

• Looking ahead at the assessment – understanding what the endpoint looks like

Have a great weekend.

The Year 9 Team

Monday 19 April: Period 5 and Period 3 swap (live on Lionel)

Friday 23 April: Last day before study leave for Year 11 and Year 13

Monday 24 May: Graduation Ceremony Crozier 4:00 - 5:00pm 

Tuesday 25 May: Graduation Ceremony  Nightingale 4:00 - 5:00pm 

Wednesday 26 May: Graduation Ceremony Rowell  4:00 - 5:00pm 

Thursday 27 May: Graduation Ceremony Upsdell 4:00 - 5:00pm

Parents can now choose to automatically forward app messages to their registered email account. All messages will still be stored and accessible in the app.

Messages that require an acknowledgement or confirmation will of course not respond in an email and for these types of messages parents would still need to view them through the app. You can control auto-forwarding through the Lionel landing page.

Dear Parents & Students,

It’s great news that KGV will be able to start a reduced early morning CAS sporting activities program, the week of Monday 26 April.

Student sign up for these activities will be available on LIONeL from:

• 3:30pm Friday 16 April until the 5:00pm Tuesday 20 April.

If activities are oversubscribed, then students who have signed up and received parental approval will be randomly allocated as per our normal policy.

Please check the student bulletin to find out further information about specific start times and restrictions in place for the activities running. We hope to add more to the program over the coming weeks, so please keep checking the student bulletin.

Good news! Students are now permitted to take LRC books home.

Please remind your child to bring a book bag to borrow. Attached is a borrowing guide for your reference to help maintain a safe environment for our community of borrowers. Returned books will be sanitized and put in quarantine. Thank you.

Message from Alumni Community

The message is from alumna Pilar Morais in support of her friend alumna Emily Tsang

I know we all go through hardships, but there is no bond quite like the KGV bond. I hope that all of you can take a moment to check out the Gofundme page below and consider how you can support our ESF family through this journey. Please note that the page is in US$ and you can amend the fee amount to $0.

You will find below a link to a Gofundme page for a good friend of mine and KGV alumni, Emily Wilson née Tsang. Please take time to read her story.

Emily is from the Class of 2000, the same as myself. Her eldest daughter, Lucia is a Year 8 KGV student and her younger daughter, Elena is due to start KGV next year.

Emily and her daughters have all gone through the ESF system and are lifetime Upsdell supporters; Emily excelled in academia, athletics and hockey. Lucia started KGV in 2019 when the protests kicked off and for the remainder of her schooling has since been disrupted by the pandemic. She hasn’t had a chance to represent the school just yet, but has shown herself strongly adept in photography and robotics.

This January the family was rocked with the shocking news that at the young age of 10, Elena who was about to begin her transition from KJS to KGV, was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma. She has begun her long arduous battle with cancer and is undergoing vigorous treatment, including chemotherapy and joint prosthesis at a later stage.

The bills have, and will continue to mount. Family members have set up this page as a way to provide financial support so the family can focus on Elena as much as possible.

Our Remarkable Story

Every year, the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Prizes asks for nominations for their award scheme which looks to honour, recognise and encourage senior secondary students in attaining a high standard of learning abilities and developing leadership qualities.

This year we are excited to announce that both KGV nominations were felicitated with the award. A huge congratulations to Allan and Faustina, both of whom have been granted the award and prize. This is an incredible honour for both the students and the school and we are very proud of both Allan and Faustina for their outstanding overall performances.

Well done Allan and Faustina on a marvellous achievement!

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