Educating for the Future

From the Master
来自校长
마스터

Dear parents

Preparations are all in place for the physical reopening of the school for select year groups from Monday. I am sure all parents will join me in celebrating this milestone, even if your own child is still engaged in eLearning, as the successful reintegration of pupils from Monday takes us ever closer to the full reopening of the school.

I wanted to use this column to pay tribute to the extraordinary work undertaken by colleagues in the school’s non-academic departments over the past 11 weeks. I often write about the dedication of the teaching staff, but this week, I think that – rightly – the focus should be on the staff who have made the physical reopening possible. Parents will be aware of the preparation work that any business in China has had to go through in order to resume normal service; for schools, this level of preparation has reached a new intensity. Our non-academic emergency response plan runs to almost 90 pages of detail on how we will keep our pupils and staff safe whilst they are in our care. Colleagues from our operations team, from JLL, our property management partners, Compass-Chartwell, the catering company, our medical team (led by senior school nurse Mrs Candy Chang), and the security team have worked tirelessly to ensure that the estate is ready for any eventuality. At the last count, we have now been visited four times by government officials over the past 10 days and passed each inspection with flying colours.

I am fully aware that, as we readmit pupils and staff once more, some of our children are anxious about the prospect of setting foot in school. As our teaching staff work with them on their pastoral and wellbeing needs, pupils and their parents can be confident that everything possible has been done to safeguard them against further risk through the professionalism and commitment to excellence of our non-academic teams. They all have my deepest gratitude.

Best wishes

Julian Jeffrey

MASTER