January News and Highlights from the Principal
This month saw DCIS receiving authorisation of the IB Diploma Programme , residential trips and an overhaul of both our libraries
Dear DCIS Parents and Guardians ,
I am very pleased to announce that the International Baccalaureate Organization have now authorised us to run the IB Diploma Programme ( IBDP ) beginning August 2017 . It is a testament to all the hard work that our staff have done that this two year process has gone so smoothly . I am very grateful to Mr Smith and Ms Rinaldi for their leadership of our application . We had some excellent feedback from our visitors two weeks ago and the speed that we received our final authorisation after this visit is a great sign that our application was very strong . We do need to gain authorisation from the Committee for Private Education ( CPE ) but , as the IBDP is taught widely in Singapore , we hope this process will also be very quick . We have had a great deal of interest for our new Sixth Form programme so we look forward to launching this in August with a mixture of internal and external students . The IB commended us on the following in their report .
The IB commends the school for :
• Its existing character which already aligns well with the IB mission and philosophy , in particular the school ’ s ethos of inclusion and service which are well established .
• The level of understanding of and enthusiasm for the commencement of the Diploma Programme .
• Their commitment towards the development of the learner profile attributes . This was repeatedly evident throughout the visit and is already well embedded into the teachers ’ ethos .
• The obvious open and good relations between all sectors of the school community . This was noted on several occasions , even when simply walking round the campus , and it was well supported by comments made by the parents , the students and the teachers .
• Its commitment to inclusion . The school has a proportion of students with special needs and is prepared to go to all lengths necessary in order to allow these students to access the full Diploma or individual courses .
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• Their obvious expertise in and dedication to the provision of useful and effective feedback to students , centering on the premise that each student should always know what to do next in order to improve .
• Their existing culture of encouraging students to participate in and reflect on their learning , which means that when students enter the IB Diploma Programme they will already be familiar with this practice .
Year 6 and above are on their residential trips this week and we are enjoying the updates and photos from Thailand , Cambodia , Laos and Myanmar ( Burma ). These expeditions are a wonderful way of extending student ’ s learning and I am so pleased that we have such a large take up of this aspect of our programme . We have four students heading to the United States early next term as part of our collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) in Boston and we have been invited to take students to the United Nations in New York this July as part of our collaboration with the UN and UNICEF . This , coupled with our Global Campus expeditions to Tanzania and Switzerland , give excellent opportunities to augment the curriculum offered in school , and follow our large focus on 21st Century skills . The Economist magazine recently ran an article on the changing shape of employment in the future and the importance of these wider skills is crucial to ensure students are equipped for the challenges of the rest of this century .
Our library will re-open on Wednesday 8th February . Our librarians have worked tirelessly to catalogue our books onto our new library system and we now have a computerised lending system that will allow us to track borrowing and manage our large collection of books . This , coupled with our new readers in Primary School , will help in our celebration of Book Week shortly after half term .