Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope you enjoyed the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday last long weekend. We enjoyed a positive (although hot) week, and it was great to see over 130 CAS activities kick off this week, with over 800 students involved. We thank our teachers and support staff for leading and organising most of these activities. 

From November 1st, over 90% of our students will need to have recorded three COVID vaccine doses or the equivalent to enable our school to remain open for full-day face-to-face schooling. We are analysing our data to see how close we are to this target. As a result, parents may receive an email over the next week asking to update information or consider arranging an additional vaccine dose for their child.

Many parents have been requesting information regarding the conditions in which a student will be deemed to be ‘fully vaccinated’ under the November 1st rules. Please see below.

SINOVAC Vaccine (age 12 years and above) 

• Students who have received 3 x doses, or 

• Students who have 2 x doses and are in the interval period (90 days) for their 3rd dose, or 

• Students with 2 x doses plus COVID recovery certificate 

SINOVAC Vaccine (age 6 months to 11 years old) 

• Students who have received 3 x doses, or 

• Students who have 2 x doses and are in the interval period (90 days) for their 3rd dose, or 

• Students with 2 x doses plus COVID recovery certificate 

BioNTech Vaccine (age 12 years and above) 

• Students who have received 3 x doses, or 

• Students who have 2 x dose and are in the interval period (150 days) for their 3rd dose, or 

• Students with 2 x dose plus COVID recovery certificate 

BioNTech Vaccine (age 5 to 11 years old) 

• Students who have received 2 x doses, or 

• Students who have 1 x dose and are in the interval period (56 days) for their 2nd dose, or 

• Students with 1 x dose plus COVID recovery certificate

To support the school as we approach the November 1st deadline, we request parents:

• Update their children’s vaccination records via the ESF App. Tap on the Lionel VLE, scroll down to COVID-19 Vaccination Pass and tap on the blue ‘here’ button.

• Respond to any enquiry emails regarding vaccination status. In most cases, these will be sent to parents when our records indicate that students do not meet the upcoming vaccine pass requirements. Please be patient with us as we try to make our records for 1900 students as accurate as possible.

We hope that with your support, we can reach the 90% threshold and guarantee our school remains open for full-day face-to-face schooling, and we can continue to run the before and after-school CAS programme. 

With our Challenge Week coming up in the first week of November, we have endeavoured to provide a range of activities to ensure that there are options for all students, irrespective of their vaccination status. 

We also look forward to holding our ‘mini swimming carnival’ next week. To ensure as many students as possible can participate as swimmers and spectators, we are running a series of small events across the day at our pool at KGV. In this COVID environment, we ran this carnival with great success last year, and we are looking forward to again seeing the famous Crozier, Nightingale, Rowell and Upsdell house spirit come to the fore.

Kind Regards,

Mark Blackshaw

Principal, KGV School

Year 8 Message

The extensive KGV CAS Activity programme started this week. It was encouraging to see the students engaging in a wide range of activities across the school campus throughout the school day. 

Individual School Photos are now available for ordering. Tutors will give your child the photo proof and the details for ordering. Please note the closing date for orders that are written on the form. 

Next week there are more exciting opportunities for our Years 8 & 9. The first Challenge Week meetings will be held on Wednesday during tutor time and we will have our first Year 8 & 9 assemblies on Thursday and Friday. 

The Swimming Gala date has changed to Friday, 23 September (not Tuesday, 20 September) and will be held onsite at KGV School. Information regarding the Gala has been posted on the Student Bulletin and the ESF App for parents. Lessons 1, 2, and Tutor Time are for the Year 7,8, and 9 events. The event will be for our swimmers only, no outside guests. 

Please continue to update your child's RAT and temperature each morning on the app. We are required to check this and follow up with any that are incomplete each day. 

A reminder that when students are in KGV uniform, including when in PE and Drama shorts, skorts and shirts, all items should be ESF/KGV branded items and comply with our KGV Dress Code. 

Year 10 students were involved in house assemblies this week where many inter-house events were discussed, including the KGV Swimming Gala next Friday, 23 September.

Challenge Week signup has closed now and the school will run 54 separate activities for Challenge Week between 31 October and 4 November. Meetings for students will be held next Wednesday during tutor time.

The extensive KGV CAS Activity programme started this week. It was encouraging to see the students engaging in a wide range of activities across the school campus throughout the school day. 

Individual School Photos are now available for ordering. Tutor teachers will give your child the photo proof and order form. Please note the closing date for orders that are on the form. 

Next week, there are more exciting opportunities for our Year 8-9. The first Challenge Week meetings will be held on Wednesday during tutor time and we will have our first Year 8 & 9 assemblies on Thursday and Friday. 

The Swimming Gala date has changed to Friday, 23 September (not Tuesday, 20 September) and will be held onsite at KGV School. Information regarding the Gala has been posted on the Student Bulletin and the ESF App for parents. Lessons 1, 2 and Tutor Time are for the Year 7,8 and 9 events. The event will be for our swimmers only, no outside guests. 

Please continue to update your child's RAT and temperature each morning on the app. We are required to check this and follow up with any incomplete daily. 

A reminder that when students are in KGV uniform, including when in PE and Drama shorts, skorts and shirts, all items should be ESF/KGV branded items and comply with our KGV Dress Code. 

Year 10 students were involved in house assemblies this week where many inter-house events were discussed, including the KGV swimming gala next Friday, September 23.

Challenge Week signup has closed now and the school will run 54 separate activities for Challenge Week between 31 October and 4 November. Meetings for students will be held next Wednesday during tutor time.

1:1 meetings during tutor time are underway and will run for the next few weeks. 

Students have been sent their Candidate data forms by email. They need to check and verify their data and return these to the exams office by 23 September. If there are any issues or questions, students can drop into the exam office at any time. We will follow up if any are not completed as we need all student data verified.

Our students will have their first Challenge Week meeting next Wednesday during Tutor Time.

We are looking forward to our KGV Annual Swimming Gala, to be held in the school next Friday, 23 September.

Further to Mr Blackshaw’s message, we still need to complete a RAT Test and take our temperatures, recording this on the ESF App each morning before coming to school each day. Please maintain the routine of completing this each morning.

Our students will have their first Challenge Week meeting next Wednesday during Tutor Time.

We are looking forward to our KGV Annual Swimming Gala, to be held in the school next Friday, 23 September.

Further to Mr Blackshaw’s message, we still need to complete a RAT Test and take our temperatures, recording this on the ESF App each morning before coming to school each day. Please maintain the routine of completing this each morning.

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Thank you to those parents who were able to attend this week’s Year 7 online Coffee Morning. It was lovely to see so many of you there. It was also wonderful to see a great turnout for our parent talk 'Top Tips on Digital Safety', held this week. Please find the recording here.

We have had a few questions from parents about Challenge Week. The final decisions are being made about the activities taking place in the week. Once confirmed, we will be able to send you details, including costs. At the moment this is likely to be approximately HK$2000. We will have these details to you next week and I will meet Year 7 students on Wednesday to provide them with further details. 

Friday 23rd is our KGV Swimming Gala. All students are asked to wear their KGV PE kits for the day to represent their House and get into the House Spirit. Swimmers will be participating in the event. We are looking forward to seeing many Year 7 students in the KGV pool next week. 

Please encourage students to use their Learning Journals and in particular, please can parents have conversations about term goals on Pg15. As tutors, we will start to have conversations about these goals and what we can do to help achieve them. 

Have a great weekend.

The Year 7 Team

Careers & H.E. Guidance

Our email address: careers.office@kgv.edu.hk.

Year 13
- We are continuing the individual 1-1 H.E. meetings with our Y11 students. Students are reminded to upload their personal statements on to Unifrog to make the meeting more productive.

- Y13 Parents info Session took place on 15 Sep. Parents can download the presentation from Lionel using their parent login ID.

- Student official full names are used on school transcripts. We would like to ask parents to check that their children’s official full name in school record matches that on their identity documents. This is especially so when students are known in school by their preferred names which may not be their official names.

Year 12
If students are still considering subject choices and would like some advice on the impact with university studies, do contact us at careers.office@kgv.edu.hk.

University Events on the KGV Careers Calendar
Highlight of upcoming events:
General
24 Sep: WebiFair: Explore the World
6 Oct: Unifrog University Fair

Hong Kong
8 Oct: HKAPA Info Day
15 Oct: CUHK Info Day

U.K.
5-18 Sep: Cambridge Hybrid Open days
19-22: UK Unifest (Week 2)
23 Sep: The Medic Portal Webinar: How to Prepare for BMAT (2023 entry)
23 Sep: Info session by Durham, Edinburgh & KCL
27 Sep: UAL: Art & Design Portfolio Workshop
27 Sep: British Council: Study UK Universities Virtual Open Day
1 Oct: St. John’s College, University of Cambridge Weibinar

U.S.A. / Canada
20 Sep: U of Toronto Info Session for ESF students
21 Sep: EducationUSA 101: Intro to U.S. Higher Education
22 Sep: U of Pennsylvania: A conversation with international students & staff at Penn
28 Sep: UC Application Workshop for High School Students
29 Sep: Engaging Distinctive Universities – Student Session
29 Sep: Info session by UBC, McMaster & UofT
2 Oct: Discover USC
5 Oct: University of Pittsburgh: How to prepare a Strong U.S. college application

Asia Pacific
17 Sep – U of South Australia International Virtual Fair

KGV Careers Team

Sodexo Menu 19-23 Sept

• Kasper Wu (Year 9)

We were delighted to hear from Kasper’s mum today, who informed us that Kasper Wu (Year 9) is recognised for his outstanding academic achievement by the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) in the Grand Honors -SET program.

In order to get his award, Kasper took the SAT held by the College Board at the age of 12 this August and scored 99th Percentile in Mathematics and 98th Percentile in the Total Score.

Well done Kasper!

• Chris Huang (Year 8)

More good news. We would like to congratulate Chris Huang in Year 8 who has achieved really great results in his recent SAT exam that took place at KGV in August.

We are very proud of you!

ESF Virtual International Evening is back again, and we are currently looking for incredible performances to celebrate and show support for the diversity within the ESF community! This year, we will be fundraising for Hong Kong Unison (https://unison.org.hk/) through SimplyGiving, where all donations will proceed towards them. Due to COVID restrictions, this event will occur virtually on Thursday, 3 November. All performances will be PRE-RECORDED and presented with a live host on the day of the event.

Regulations:

• Pre-recorded performance
• Performance should be planned to be 1-2 minutes long
• It’s highly recommended to wear clothes that represent your culture!
• If you are a parent signing up for the event, please put your email address (or contact email)

SOME PERFORMANCE IDEAS:

• Dancing (solo, group, ballet, tap dance, jazz, contemporary dance, etc.)
• Singing/Vocal
• Musical Instrument (solo, ensemble, band, orchestra, etc.)
• Comedy
• Skit
• Martial Arts
• Tricks (e.g. with special equipment, etc.)
• ANYTHING else that represents YOUR CULTURE or ENTERTAINING

Additional Information:

Performing in this event will be counted as an S&A and CAS experience. Therefore, for students looking for service and CAS experience, this is an excellent opportunity for you to do anything creative!

Sign-up:

This sign-up form will close on Wednesday, 5 October.

If you require any additional info or help, please email Mrs Shobha Sanker (sankers1@rchk.edu.hk).