Dear Parents,
Our first full week of home-based learning began today and we want to thank all of you for your support as students and teachers get used to the new way of working together. Thank you to everyone who sent positive notes of encouragement, as well as suggestions on how we can make it work better for you at home. We will be sending an initial survey to teachers, students and parents towards the end of the week. Please do watch out for it and give us your feedback so we can ensure students get the most out of the experience for the next few weeks.
A few short pieces of news from us:
Activities
Our Activities teams on both campuses have been working on creating a remote version of our Activities programme, with a goal of providing a broad range of meaningful and enriching opportunities in which anyone in our community may participate. All the Activities run by UWCSEA staff are free of charge.
A more interactive experience will be offered to students currently training in Sports Teams. The respective sports leaders will contact these students and should they choose to participate, they will be able to share feedback on their experiences and instructors will keep an ongoing dialogue with students on progress made.
You can view the sites via the links below. Do talk to your family about participating – we hope they provide some positive fun for you over the coming weeks!
Community Health
The Singapore authorities continue to rely on the College to keep them informed of the health of our community. It is very important that you continue to inform the College if your child is observing a Leave of Absence (LoA), Stay Home Notice (SHN) or Quarantine Order (QO) by completing the isolation order declaration in CIMS (log in here). Please make sure you update the student travel declaration. If your child is no longer planning to travel, or will not be returning to Singapore, please ‘delete’ the current information and then click ‘submit’ to lodge a ‘NIL’ return declaration. We must have a travel declaration for all students.
As of Monday, 13 April at 3pm the College has:
- No cases of COVID-19 among the student community
- No cases of COVID-19 among the staff community
- 12 cases of COVID-19 among the wider family community
Eleven of the 12 cases were reported to the community before now. All the cases are outlined in the table here. Across both campuses, we currently have 3 students on a Quarantine Order (QO); 0 students on a Stay-Home Notice (SHN); and 3 students on Leave of Absence (LoA). These numbers are reducing as families complete their orders.
We send our very best to affected families for a swift recovery and to all our families for their continued health.
2020/2021 Term Dates
As we support our community through Term 3, we are also thinking of the start of the new school year in August. It is difficult to predict how things will look through the summer. However, both our current and incoming families would benefit from a focal point for preparations, and we feel that a slightly later start will give us a bit of extra time to manage whatever happens next. We have therefore decided to begin the 2020/2021 school year a week later than previously published, starting on Monday, 24 August (instead of Monday, 17 August). We will still guarantee the same number of school days by moving two of our Professional Learning days for teachers before school resumes in January and slightly shortening the October break.
You can review the revised term dates here. Unfortunately, this may not be the last change we need to make, but we will continue to work on this basis until we know otherwise. Thank you for your flexibility and understanding.
Yours sincerely,
Elizabeth Bray, Head of UWCSEA Dover
Graham Silverthorne, Head of UWCSEA East
