Dear Parents,
We are pleased to inform you that our submission to the Committee for Private Education (CPE) has been approved and, with the support of the Board of Governors, we are ready to implement a return to school for some of our students, beginning from Tuesday, 2 June. We cannot have more than 50% of our students or staff on campus at any one time, so Principals will write with details for each school section. This message is intended as an overview and to share some of our thinking as we made our decisions.
When deciding whether and how to bring students and staff safely back on campus, the leadership teams had some core principles in mind:
- Health and safety: Students come back on campus only if we can create an environment that is safe for them and for staff. In this, International SOS (iSOS) have been our medical and security partner.
- Compliance: Follow all official guidance, and ensure that a decision for any one group does not compromise our compliance with regulations, as that jeopardises all students.
- Connection: Seek to rebuild connections with students by inviting as many students on to campus as possible, subject to constraints.
- Quality: Students return where we are confident that we can create high quality learning experiences for them.
- Priority: Prioritise returns to campus according to the needs of the student population.
- Continuity, coherence and simplicity: Where we cannot improve the quality of learning because of the restrictions imposed on bringing students back to school, we will continue with remote learning
With these principles in mind – and acknowledging that we would have to find a balance between them – it is clear that we will have different plans according to the age and learning needs of students. At the same time, in order to follow CPE rules on numbers of staff and students on campus at any one time, our individual school plans also need to reflect differences, such as: the size of the grade; the physical space; and the number of teachers and support staff required to support the programme on campus, while continuing to deliver remote learning for those students still at home. Finally, the need to ensure that we could manage all the practicalities related to safe distancing meant that we necessarily took a conservative approach in terms of number of students on campus.
There are many complex variables, and many models were considered before we reached the outline. We are confident it is the best (and in many cases only) arrangement we can make for the students between now and the end of term on 19 June. You can view the summaries for each campus below:
Please note that we will not be offering lunchtime or after-school Activities or Service or ITP classes for students.
There are slightly different approaches on each campus, because of the size of the different cohorts and the physical space; these differences will also allow us to trial the benefits of different models that we can apply during the course of the 2020/2021 school year, should this be necessary.
Principals will write with further details in due course. In the meantime, please be assured that the health and safety of students is our first priority and our return process has been endorsed by our medical partners at iSOS. You can see an overview of the safe distancing processes in place here. Please also note that only staff who are involved directly in delivering the Learning Programme will be on campus, while all others will continue to work from home. We recognise that some parents will nevertheless choose not to send students back on campus and of course we fully respect your decision on behalf of your child.
To provide further information, we invite interested parents to a webinar with Elizabeth Bray, Graham Silverthorne and Dr Guillaume Pollet from iSOS. During the webinar Lizzie and Graham will provide further insight into our thinking, while Dr Pollet will address health and safety issues in Singapore and the region. Details will be confirmed and an invitation sent as soon as possible.
Finally, we would like to say how pleased we are to have the opportunity to welcome some of our students back on campus and to reconnect with our community and one another. Though many of us will still be working from home for the last few weeks of term, it is a pleasure to imagine our young people back at school again, learning together in person and connecting once more to each other and the College. We have been so impressed with their resilience and their positive attitude. We are very grateful to them, and to you, for your support.
Yours sincerely,
College Leadership Team
Carma Elliot, College President
Elizabeth Bray, Head of UWCSEA Dover
Graham Silverthorne, Head of UWCSEA East
Sinéad Collins, Director of Engagement and External Relations
Pascale Dillon, Chief Operating Officer
