From the Principal 12.01.19
Dear Parents & Guardians,
Happy New Year. I trust you have all had a restful and refreshing break and been able to spend quality time with your loved ones. Welcome back to KIS and the new term where we also welcome over twenty new students with their families. Thank you at this time for your patience and understanding as we get used to the new traffic routine, especially at pick up time, with ECAs starting next week we should hopefully see less congestion.
At school we take the welfare of our children and staff very seriously, the main focus of this is known as Safeguarding and as such our Child Protection Officer role has developed into a more encompassing role. The Designated Safeguard Lead (DSL) is a role to support not just our children but also our community with safeguarding matters. Mr Lee Gorman has not worked at KIS since last year and I am very happy to announce that Mrs Amy Garrick will be our School’s DSL. Please feel free to contact Mrs Garrick with any safeguarding concerns.
The school continues to strive to improve and you may have noticed some small changes, improvements to the Primary library, new storage next to the sports hall and new curtains for the stage. The sports hall is a wonderful space but is currently underused by our community due to the climate. We are seriously looking into creating a controlled environment in the hall by closing off the walls and installing air conditioning. If any of our parents are involved in or who know people in construction, we are tendering the project and interested parties should contact me directly; we are also interested to make some links with solar panel companies if you know of any.
Whilst tidying up over the holidays we have noticed we have a large collection of lost property. Where we can identify items, we will do our best to return them, however, there still remains many lost and forgotten possessions. We will be displaying these items throughout the remainder of this half term for parents / students to identify and take home. Anything left at the start of the February break will be given to charity. Also please note, if you need to purchase uniform, all items with the old logo (except hats) are now reduced by 50% from the original price, remember though these will only be able to be worn at school for this calendar year.
Last term we conducted a community wide survey regarding the school canteen. Thank you to all those who were able to take part and I have included the highlights of the results below:
Respondents were 20% of our parents, 60% of our staff and 61% of our students (Years 3 to 12, not including Year 7). Of these, 42% use the Canteen every day, 47% once a month to once or more per week whilst 11% of respondents never go to the canteen. On average students spent RM 9.00 per day. Responses to the questions showed satisfaction levels were high (please note a positive response includes fair, good, very good and excellent)
Variety of food 89% positive
Quality of food 82.5% positive
Healthy choices available 75% positive
Canteen environment 90% positive
Service from staff 93% positive
Awareness of products 32% positive
The majority of comments relating to improvements focussed around increasing the size of the canteen, reducing queues and reducing cost. A desire for more healthy options was requested across all three sections of our community.
I have met with the Canteen management and shared the results of the survey in more detail and have discussed ways forward to improve the service they offer. In support of a greener environment the canteen will no longer be using straws after the Chinese New Year holiday.
Even though it is the start of a new term, we are already looking and planning for the end of this term, in particular we are looking to have a Family Fun Day for the whole community and also to host an Easter Holiday Camp for our Primary students over the holiday period in April. Keep an eye out for more information about these events over the course of this term.
Finally, for school trips I wish our KIS Stingrays the best of luck this weekend as they make their way over to a FOBISIA swim meet in Bangkok. Thank you to Ms Beltran and Mr Richie for organising and accompanying them. Go Stingrays! Early next week, Mr O’Kane is leading a group of our secondary students to Shanghai to take part in an MUN conference with CISSMUN. Ms De Sa will also be there to support our students and we wish them great success in their debates; it really is an excellent opportunity.
Whilst I wish you a lovely weekend, please note I will be in the UK from Tuesday and the school will be in the very capable hands of Mrs Renshaw and the Leadership Team for the following two weeks.
Yours faithfully,
Ian Gross
Principal
