01: Friday August 14th 2020

From the Director

Dear ABC community,

Welcome to a new school year. I know it is hardly ideal that we remain in this virtual context but on behalf of all of the teachers and learning assistants I want to assure you that it still feels great to be interacting once more with your children. Thank you so much for entrusting them to us for the year ahead!

I am delighted to report that we are fully staffed for the academic year and have been strengthened by the arrival of some excellent teachers both from here in El Salvador and overseas. I do hope many of you will be able to join us for the “Know Your School” sessions next week when you can get a closer look at them!

As well as these new appointments, we have a number of current colleagues stepping into new promoted roles. I would like to make special mention of Ms. Marianne Taylor who takes over leadership of Primary and Mr. Matt Burdett who takes on the role of Assistant Headteacher (Curriculum) in secondary. They have already proven themselves to be excellent appointments and I am sure we all wish them continued success in the year ahead.

I am also pleased to inform you that, albeit in very unusual circumstances where their grades were calculated using, amongst other factors, historical school data, our Grade 10 and Grade 12 students on average achieved slightly better IGCSE and IB grades than their predecessors. Well done! I do hope our graduates will retain a close sense of connection to the ABC and that before long we will be able to celebrate their graduation with them in person.

We hope to have your gift bags ready for you soon. It took a little while for us to source the bags themselves but they are now on order. Please can I emphasise that they are intended as gift bags, not as part of our educational provision to you. They will not contain sufficient resources for the year. In any case, the main equipment for now remains an electronic device with which to access our online learning offer. We are currently giving out more Chromebooks (that’s now approaching 300 issued in total) to priority families and to my knowledge we are the only bilingual school in the country lending our expensive electronic hardware in this way.

The medium and long term future of our learning community must be a key concern for all of us so I am thrilled (and a little humbled) to be able to tell you that our projections for student numbers for the year ahead now exceed 1300, indeed it seems likely that our final student roll will be very similar (within a 2% margin) to last year’s. I know you, as parents, are making significant sacrifices to send your children to our school, while we have found $350,000 worth of staffing savings (almost all through natural turnover and efficiencies), have dug deeply into our capital reserves and are absorbing, as a result of the discounts and special arrangements we have offered, a substantial decrease in revenue. I will quantify these figures for you in a subsequent letter in due course but my point is that we have all made sacrifices in the interests of the children in our community, and that is something we should all be very proud of.

Best wishes for the weekend ahead!

Stephen Lang

From the Head of Primary

Welcome back, I speak on behalf of all our staff to say how happy we are to see the children again. The Primary staff have been working hard all summer to create the best education we can, under these challenging circumstances. We have created a curriculum that balances your children’s wellbeing, with high-quality teaching. However, our provision will not suit every child or every family. Please contact your class teacher to let them know what is working well, and in what ways we could further support you.


I know that some of you have been struggling with our Google Platform. We will do our best to support you and we are working on a Troubleshoot document. In the meantime here are a few tips:


- Install Google Chrome on your device, and use this as your default browser


- Use your child’s email address as the default account in Google Chrome


We have been purchasing new subscriptions to online educational platforms, in order to support teachers in the classroom and students at home. Take a look at our Primary Parent Portal for further details. Today I want to highlight one learning platform, that you might find useful:

https://www.brainpop.com/

username: acadbrit

password: salvador


BrainPop, also featuring BrainPopJr for younger learners and BrainPopEspanol. Brain Pop is a platform with engaging learning games, animated movies and activities. Covering a range of subjects, it encourages learners to ask questions and form their own ideas.


Finally, although many of you know me, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself properly as your new Head of Primary. A role that I feel very privileged to hold, working for such a wonderfully compassionate and committed community. After graduating from university with a degree in Philosophy and English Literature, I started working as an assistant in the special needs department at a primary school in the south of England. I knew then that I wanted to be a teacher! After gaining my postgraduate teaching qualification I went to work in an Infant School which was involved in two research projects, Deeper Learning and Collaborative Learning. Afterwards, I moved to a very challenging primary school in North London, where I learnt first hand that Effort really leads to Success. I worked with children for whom academic success was not expected, but I saw first hand how dedication, creativity and teamwork can help struggling students achieve amazing results. Then I came to work at the ABC as a Prepa teacher, I fell in love with the school and country. Now here I am, six years later as the Head of Primary. Here are some of my core beliefs:

- Treat children with love and understanding at all times

- Have high expectations of all children, they are capable of so much

- Children are expert learners, trust them, listen to them, and allow them to teach you and each other

Marianne Taylor


Lower Primary

Back to School Night:

Grade 1 - Monday August 17th 6:00 pm Link: meet.google.com/yik-serm-oet


Upper Primary

Back to School Night:

Grade 2 - Tuesday August 18th-6:00pm Link: meet.google.com/bzf-wdky-uwn

Grade 3 - Wednesday August 19th-6:00pm Link: meet.google.com/gqm-zyoj-zen

Grade 4 - Thursday August 20th- 6:00pm Link: meet.google.com/aax-dzps-rsx

Grade 5 - Friday August 21st-6:00pm Link: meet.google.com/mgy-dytv-ovj

From the Secondary Leadership Team

Dear parents and carers,

On behalf of the Secondary School I would like to welcome you back to this academic year! Although the start has been totally different to anything we have ever experienced, our community and learning offer continues to be strong and we are committed to making this year a success and with your help and support, I know our children will continue to grow and flourish.

I would like to make a special mention and wish good luck to our Senior class. Your last first day is something you will never forget! Make this year count and ensure you take advantage of all the opportunities this year offers you.

It has been great getting back to the routines of school, even if we are still delivering lessons online! This week our pastoral team has been focusing on well being and on helping our children settle in. Focus points have been varied and have covered the basics such as punctuality, organisation, support and homework to more target setting, thinking positively, getting involved in CAS and helping others and doing what we can to change the world!

I want to take this opportunity to thank each Head of Year for the great job they have done in making sure our students are well settled.

Very importantly: Mr Lang will be leading sessions with all students on the updated ABC values and I encourage all parents to discuss them at home so we can all deliver a consistent message and work together to consolidate them in our community.

Please do not hesitate to contact the SSLT team or your Head of Year if you have any questions or concerns: we are all here to help!

This week Grade 11 received their IGCSE results from Cambridge International Assessment. A*-C grades were 2% higher than the previous year. We are delighted with these strong results especially considering the very difficult and unusual circumstances this year. Congratulations Grade 11!

If you have not visited the ABC Secondary Parent Portal yet (accessible from the school website), we recommend you do so to access all the necessary information for online learning for this term. We also recommend all parents ensure they can access the iSAMS Parent Portal (online and mobile app), this tool can be used to see your son/daughters timetable, tribal stars and flags as well as their attendance to their online classes. If you do not have an account please request for one using this form.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Kind regards,

Carmen Chávez
Assistant Headteacher - Student Wellbeing


Dates for your Agenda


August

Tuesday 18th - G7/8 Know Your School (for parents) - 4:30pm

Wednesday 19th - G9/10 Know Your School (for parents) - 4:30pm

Thursday 20th - G11/12 Know Your School (for parents) -4:30pm