From the Head of Secondary 19.02.2022
Well done to our Year 11 students who completed their Mock Examinations this week. Teachers are currently returning papers and giving feedback, and the mock reports will be published on Wednesday next week. This will be followed by the Year 11 Teacher / Parent / Student meetings on Monday 28th. These will take place online and on that day the students will leave school at 2pm in order to be at home with their parents before their first meeting. The Year 9 meetings also took place this week, with parents and students having the opportunity to discuss progress so far and the decisions to be made about IGCSE subject choices for Years 10 and 11.
A few students could not complete their exams and so there will be catch-up tests for them between the 2nd and the 11th February, at the same time as the Year 12 / 13 Mocks. The Malay mock orals have also been postponed to Friday 25th.
Many congratulations to our Gold Duke of Edinburgh participants for undergoing the real physical challenge of the Adventurous Journey! This is a huge achievement and they should feel very proud of themselves. Many thanks to the teacher leaders, Miss McNutt, Mr Gant and Ms Beresford.
Rubbish! Many thanks to Tiggi Mornington Sanford for contributing an article this week about a problem which we cannot fail to be aware of here in Sabah. As you will see from reading this, she took the initiative and decided to do something about it by meeting with the Minister for Kudat, to discuss what could be done to ease the problem. Well done Tiggi!
Mrs Margaret Renshaw
Deputy Principal / Head of Secondary
Rubbish!
by Tiggi Mornington Sanford
I am always shocked by the amount of plastic that is on the beaches in Sabah.
We have a beach in front of our house near kudat which we try and clean everyday but after a storm or if it’s a high tide we often see this:
Last October we collected 41 extra-large (XL) bags of plastic rubbish which was nearly all water bottles and an air condition unit! The year before we even found an ice cream fridge.
We work with Kudat Turtle Conservation Society (KTCS) as we have both green and hawksbill turtles laying eggs on our beach so it is really important that it is kept clean to enable them to make their way to the top area of the beach which is their nesting area.
The big problem is that we don’t have any rubbish bins or a rubbish collection in the kampung so we have to take all our rubbish into Kudat town which is 30 minutes drive away and so it’s very environmentally unfriendly!
This is our car filled with just half of the rubbish bags as we had to do two trips into Kudat.
I decided to ask the minister for Kudat, YB Ben Chong, to see if he could help. We had a meeting and I showed him pictures of the beach before and after a storm. He agreed with me that we need a lot more education in schools about protecting the environment and also bins so people don’t leave the rubbish on the beach or throw it on the ground for it to get washed into the sea. I have to write a proposal for him with my ideas. Let’s hope we can then reduce the plastic rubbish in the Kampungs, on the beautiful beaches of Kudat and also help the turtles and other marine life!
