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Dear Parents,

A joint message from Interim Chair of the Board and College President 

The UWCSEA community is above all a mission-driven one, a diverse group of people united in common purpose and with a shared set of values. In the middle of Singapore’s circuit breaker measures, we are relying more than ever on each other. Thank you for your support as we have responded to the changing situation. 

It is now clear that the global economy is going to be impacted to an extent not seen since the 1930s. Singapore will not be immune to this. Together with the Board of Governors, over the last several weeks senior leaders have been thinking about our responsibilities to our community, both now and in the months and years to come. While we don’t have all the answers, and it seems likely we will need to keep things under review for some time and find solutions to problems as yet unknown, it is clear what our next steps towards responding to our own community’s situation should be. We will be guided by our mission, and the following principles:

Guiding Principle 1: We must provide continuity of education for our students, applying everything we know about best practice in remote learning, while continuing to adapt and change according to student, parent and teacher feedback.

The initial measures that we have taken are as follows:

  • Our remote home-based learning programme is providing students from K–11 with age-appropriate opportunities to continue with their learning. We have a variety of practices, as we do in a ‘live’ class situation. There are synchronous lessons that include whole class teacher/students interactions; smaller monitored chat groups under teacher supervision; shared tasks and materials to be studied and completed ‘offline’; and supported online ‘chats’ with teachers for our younger students. 
  • Our Grade 10 (I)GCSE students are being offered an additional online learning programme that extends their (I)GCSE learning and prepares them for entry into the IB Diploma Programme. At the same time as writing these course materials and delivering them to classes, teachers are undertaking significant and unexpected tasks to provide exam boards with data required for the award of (I)GCSE certification or the alternative UWCSEA bespoke certification.
  • We have extended the learning opportunities for our Grade 12 students (who would normally be about to depart our care for exam study leave) with a self-supported programme that can provide both rich pre-university learning or essential skills for their next steps, whatever they may be. Teachers will continue to connect with students as they complete the significant requirements of providing additional materials required for IB Diploma accreditation. Grade 12 students have been provided with a rapidly curated programme of optional online courses offered by external bodies and recommended by the College; as part of our support, we are investigating ways in which we can subsidise some of the fee-paying courses of most benefit. We continue, simultaneously, to plan for virtual graduation experiences to celebrate the conclusion of this most unusual year.
  • We have assembled a strong online Activities programme, which has been shared via websites (Dover I East) with the community; hopefully we will see great participation by students, staff and their families.
  • Many of our student Service leaders have continued to be strong and active in online groups. Service staff members are in ongoing supportive communication with student groups who are designing new ways of awareness raising, planning future engagements and leveraging rich learning from our current situation. As we settle into remote life, we will continue to gauge how to increase the level of engagement that the community can sustain in this area.

All in all, our teachers are working at full capacity, supported by our administrative staff – very much as normal but in quite different ways. We are learning as we teach and are in the process of actively seeking feedback to improve what we do during the course of this week.

Guiding Principle 2: We are a united community and will do our best to take care of each other emotionally, practically and financially, while ensuring the sustainability of the College for future generations.

Our initial response is as follows:

  • The tuition fee, development levy and boarding fee increases announced in January are cancelled. 2020/2021 school fees will be the same as 2019/2020 for all students. Families who have already paid the increased Term 1 fees will be provided with a credit against Term 2 fees.
  • In June, we will be launching a UWCSEA Financial Assistance Programme, designed to support families who are experiencing short-term financial hardship as a result of an unexpected change in circumstances. We have been planning this for some time, but we have accelerated its launch and intend for it to be a permanent programme. To manage everyone’s expectations, we must emphasise that the fund will be limited and cannot be a long-term solution for individual families. We hope, rather, that it will help at critical times for our families most in need. We will be writing to the community with details of how to apply for support from this fund at the beginning of June.
  • Seed money for the Financial Assistance Programme will come from operational savings and donations. Any family who would like to donate all or part of their savings on school fees for 2020/2021, please email us.
  • We are investigating alternative fee payment plans, to help families with cash flow. We hope to come back with further details on this soon.
  • We will look at additional costs for parents beyond school fees in a typical year (Activities, Outdoor Education trips) with a view to containing them as much as possible.
  • We have made a commitment, during this circuit breaker period, that our lowest-paid staff members whose families depend upon us for their livelihood, will receive full salary whether or not they are able to provide services to us during the restrictions on movement. This also applies to any of our service staff who are not employed directly by the College, but who are such important members of our community.

Our letter today represents a first response: finding the right and considered solutions to extreme circumstances that impact on us all to varying degrees – while also guarding the College’s long-term sustainability for future generations – takes time. We do not yet know the full impact on our community or on Singapore from COVID-19. We look forward to being able to be back together, in person, when the circuit breaker is over – as a united and purposeful community.

Yours sincerely,

Sajjad Akhtar, Interim Chair, Board of Governors
Carma Elliot, College President