Dear parents,

Let me welcome you to the first official newsletter for the whole school for 2020. I will start off with two very good pieces of news. Firstly, on early analysis, our IGCSE grades have gone up by 4% to an 89% pass rate A to C. We just got the results yesterday and they are very good indeed. Mr Mike will talk about this more in his section.

The second piece of great news is that the school has achieved the second stage accreditation for Quantum Learning, and this is very much linked with the point above. Teaching and Learning continues to grow. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate all the students who have done well and to thank my very committed and hard-working staff for the impact they have had.

I have been very busy welcoming new parents and students to the school and going to many events and visiting many classrooms. As I said last week in my welcome message, it has been a very smooth start and very quickly, by the second day, students were in class, learning as usual. It seemed that the school has been open for much longer. I went to the Year 6 entry point this week on ‘Being Human’ which was very good, and I also sat in on a presentation by four very able Year 11 students on their plans for the Model United Nations (MUN) 2020 and am delighted that this will continue to grow.

On Wednesday I had the privilege of launching the new look PSHE programme for 2020. Last year I listened to students and parents and part of the timetable has been redrawn. There is no longer the weekly one hour assembly, instead PSHE will take its place and will look across Secondary at values and ethics through a thematic approach taken from the Eight Keys of Excellence and our RECIPE. The third Key of Excellence is ‘Speak With Good Purpose’ and this will be the theme for the next two months. This is about the power of words and how the whole school community needs to be aware of how words can sometimes be limiting and damaging, or creative and expansive. Students will explore the themes related to this including generosity, honesty, friendship, speaking boldly and supporting each other in their PSHE periods. I would like to thank my PSHE team for designing this and helping to deliver it: Mr Gary and Miss Rita.

In other news, Miss Rebecca, our musical director, has launched the Music Academy whereby outside expert musicians are now coming into school to teach those students who are interested. This is an effort to build up the school orchestra and is designed to build the profile of music in the school. The first instruments that will be on offer will be the trumpet, trombone, saxophone and Chinese drums. The students were given a presentation on Wednesday afternoon and if anyone is interested in learning or indeed continuing with these instruments please see Miss Rebecca.

As a favour, I urge all parents to pleased habitually log in to your Engage as there is information there that is often missed. It is important to log in at least once a week to look at the information is posted there by all the school sections: Early Years, Primary and Secondary. Sometimes, communications are missed but it has been there all along.

Finally, the safety of our students is paramount and with that in mind I ask you kindly to please respect our rules. In particular the wearing of school tags at all times and driving carefully in and around the school confines. These rules have been thought through and are not there for the sake of rules. They have been designed and implemented for the smooth running of the school and for the safety of your sons and daughters. Everyone from the guards at the gate, the teachers, the canteen staff and cleaning staff are doing their best so I would really appreciate that you bear this in mind in your daily interactions with all.

Kind regards
Stefano Piumatti
Principal of Taylor’s International School Puchong