It has been another whirlwind half term and I would like to wish everyone a happy holiday when it comes. This last half term has brought many joys. The Parent Information Fair brought us all together to form the partnerships between home and school that are so important to the year ahead. DC’s sporting success has been fantastic to see, including a recent tournament win for our U14 footballers in both the girls’ and boys’ teams and many other accolades besides. DC Futures Week has helped our students in Secondary to explore their choices around careers and higher education, and in Primary the recent Swim Gala gave students a valuable opportunity to practise and showcase their swimming skills. The 24-hour play and a recent ISTA workshop have given students some valuable early performance opportunities. And last weekend, student leaders put together a fantastic Model United Nations conference and hosted a number of visiting schools in doing so. Amid all this, we also had a number of weather-related campus closures and the fact that the whole community did so well in switching online and carrying on the learning is testament to the adaptability that we have all acquired from hard yards in recent years. I am grateful to everyone in our community – students, staff, parents and caregivers, and others – for the strong support for our community that has been shown once again this half-term.
Alongside the many positives from this period, the support of the whole community has been so vital to the response to the bus incident in late August. It is, of course, something that has profoundly affected people’s lives, and its impact has been felt across the community. Responding to such an event is not a short-term consideration and care for those involved in the incident, and their families, will need to continue for a long period. The students affected continue to receive support from staff and their classmates. All of them have shown immense strength, and I know I speak for the whole community in saying that our thoughts remain with them and their families, and that our support for them will be unwavering into the future.
Looking ahead to next half term, we will once again have the opportunity to show our qualities as a school community. As you will know, we use the framework of the 5 DC Outcomes to describe what a DC education is all about. They were developed from our vision statement, to Grow. Discover. and Dream., and they embed the elements of the IB Learner Profile.
Some of the things that excite me most next half term relate to No Boundaries. Some of our students will be heading beyond Hong Kong for the first time since the pandemic in order to Take Principled Action in addressing the needs of partner communities, and those students in Year 6 and above who take part in local programmes here in the city will also be working towards this outcome. We will have the chance to Be Internationally Minded as we continue to foster multilingualism through ongoing work on our language programme. Our students will Achieve Highly, for instance in Year 13 where the culminating stages of the IB Diploma Extended Essay will take place. They will be challenged to Be Agentic, for example via the Student Council and its discussions about how to develop the student experience further through student leadership. And we will Flourish together, both inside and outside the classroom, through the daily interactions and relational practices that help to support our school culture and help every individual to feel good, function well, and do good.
I look forward to working in partnership with you all after the break, with students returning to campus on Tuesday 31 October. In the meantime I wish you all an excellent and peaceful half term holiday.
James Smith
Principal