#WeRGIS Weekly
#WeRGIS Weekly
Embedded Files
Week One - September 2nd 2022
From the Head of School's Desk
From the Head of School's Desk
Dear Parents,
It has been an absolute pleasure to welcome your children back to GIS. Our teachers have prepared thoroughly for the start of term and our new staff have been here at GIS for more than two weeks, having participated in a thorough Orientation Week. We welcome all our new families I thank the current students who have been so kind to all our new entrants. Friendly GIS students even made the front cover of Gulf News this week!
I enjoyed speaking to students in our first assemblies and also our new families on the first morning of school. GIS has become a school of choice for so many and we have never had such huge interest, which reflects so well on the word of mouth from current families and the culture and ethos at the school. Not only do we have large numbers of new students, we also have the highest retention rate ever of our current families, so I thank you all for staying with us on the journey!
Some of you have shown great interest in our four IB programmes and in particular the newest of these, the Career-related Programme (CP). I am delighted that our CP Coordinator, Ms Mariona, has featured so prominently in the latest edition of the Independent School Council (ISC) Research magazine. Thank you Ms Mariona for sharing this success.
https://iscresearch.com/stem-pathways/
As you know, at GIS we network with many schools, universities, businesses and beyond in order to benefit our students and to keep learning from best practice elsewhere. Even this week, we welcomed University College Dublin to work with us and our visitors were particularly interested in our Center of Excellence and the opportunity to offer scholarships to our students.
Finally, I must address the traffic issues that have taken up so much of our time this week. I would like to thank the vast majority of our parents, who have shown patience and have asked for constructive feedback. The first point to make is that, as many of you are now aware, the three Principals and three MSOs of the Al Khail schools held a meeting before the start of term. Senior GEMS Health and Safety and Operations executives were also at that meeting. This has resulted not only in staggered timings between the three schools, but more importantly in constructive talks with RTA and Emaar.
Mr Suresh Kumar, GEMS Senior Vice President, Properties and Infrastructure, states that, ‘a good meeting was held yesterday with the senior management of Emaar'. As soon as we have further information on possible solutions to the traffic, we will communicate with the community.
I can assure you we at GIS, WEK and NMS are working hard with our GEMS colleagues to support our families and ensure a smooth road network. As you know, we have opened more gates for parents to pick up and drop off (Gate 4, 5, 6 and 7) and the interim access via the Dubai Hills estate. In the meantime, the GEMS group has given us more security guards and I would ask all parents to follow the first tenet of our school culture of Respect when following the advice and instructions from the guards. Please drop children in designated areas (the drop off bay is NOT for parking) and move on quickly. We must avoid an accident.
We hope that the situation will also ease a little as parents decide to car pool and as more children take the school bus. However, please rest assured that we shall continue to work hard with our colleagues in GEMS and also the leadership of Emaar and RTA for the construction of new roads and we are optimistic on this front.
Once again, it has been wonderful to have our families back, to see all of your children and to engage in amazing teaching and learning. We have so many plans for the year and I shall share some next week.
Have a lovely weekend.
Kind regards,
Simon Herbert
Extra Curricular Activities and ECA's
A warm welcome or welcome back to our GIS community. We look forwrd to being in touch with you in the coming weeks with and introduction to the GISPA team and upcoming GISPA events!
In the meantime, we would like to remind families that if they would like to donate any pre-loved uniform to GISPA for the pre-loved sales that we run, we would be very grateful. We had a hugely successful sale on Monday and would love to be able to run another one soon.
GIS Community Calendar 22/23
GIS Community Calendar 22/23
If you would like to subscribe to the the GIS Community Calendar, please click HERE for the link.
If you would like to subscribe to the the GIS Community Calendar, please click HERE for the link.
This calendar will be continually updated to reflect key dates and events.
This calendar will be continually updated to reflect key dates and events.
STS_Parents as Partners_2022 With RoSPA.pdf
Page updated
Report abuse