For May – July 2021
This summer issue of the ISPP Pulse recognises and reflects on events and activities at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year and also provides a welcome to you all to the 2021-22 year.
As I outlined in my last letter in February – April issue, the 2020-2021 academic year continued to be unique in terms of the need to transition between being at school, online and on-campus, as well as a hybrid of the two and I continue to pay tribute to all members of our community for their resilience, as we all worked together for successful outcomes and impacts for our students and our community.
As I write this article, there is a great deal of work being done to ensure that we will be ready for all options for the beginning of the 2021-2022 academic year. We of course hope that this will be an on-campus capacity as we see a very strong vaccination roll out within Phnom Penh. As I write, we currently have over 90% of all our employees vaccinated and this should progress towards 100% as we approach the beginning of the academic year. As last year we are also prepared from an initial online or blended learning start if required but again would seek to transition to on-campus learning as quickly as possible. I will not go into full details here as things tend to change and develop almost on a daily basis and we will update our community on a timely and regular basis as our plans develop.
I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Graduating Class of 2021. We were very pleased to be able to hold restricted graduation at the end of the academic year. We are also proud of how they worked through the challenges presented as they progressed through their IB Diploma over the past two years and the results that they were awarded in July. 96% of the students who took the full diploma passed it with an average of just over 35 points (which equals our previous highest scores). The highest score was 44 (just one short of the maximum) and just over a quarter (25.5%) of our students achieved 40 points or more (with the world average being 9%). I would like to congratulate the class of 2021, Angelique Hiscox and the teaching and admin team as well as the students’ families who all worked together to support the students through the past two years of the IB programme in such a difficult context.
Some further positive news over the summer also. Despite challenging circumstances we were able to complete the selection process for our scholarship programme for incoming Grade 6 students for the new academic year with three more students joining the programme. We now have 19 students in Grades 6 through 9 and are committed to ensuring we have 5% (between 3 to 4 students) at each grade level from grade 6 to 12 in the coming years.
During this coming academic year, we will be developing some additional communication tools. As school starts we will be rolling out an ISPP School App for you to use in your school devices and we will also be producing “A Year in Reflection” publication that will provide an overview of the highlights in each of our core and supporting values from the 2020-2021 academic year. This is a new publication but will be part of our annual publications and this will be sent home early in the academic year.
We are very much looking forward to a more “regular” academic year and look forward to seeing you all on campus once again.
With kind regards,
Gareth
