Quality British Education in Saudi Arabia
28th August 2010
Dear Parents
2010 / 2011 School Year
Welcome to the start of another school year. It does promise to be a very eventful year and with over 100 new children joining our school this term it also promises to be a very important year in terms of our school moving forward. Most year groups will welcome new class members and I know from experience that everything will be done to help them settle in as quickly as possible.
We have very few staff changes from last year allowing continuity to be maintained, details of new staff will be published on our Website shortly together with a full staffing list of teaching and non teaching staff. There will be opportunities for parents of children in Foundation, Key Stage 1 and 2 to visit school for our forthcoming ‘Back to School’ days. These will give you an opportunity to meet your child’s class teacher and discover more about their particular year group. Details will be issued by the Heads of Key Stage in the next few days.
This year sees DBGS submit its first progress report to CIS following our Accreditation last year. This will be completed during this term in order for CIS themselves to gain a picture of steps we have taken towards continued school improvement. There are several new initiatives scheduled to be introduced this year, details of these and other significant events in school will be circulated and publicised on our school website. It is hoped that we can continue to keep you updated on events and report back on achievements and successes on an almost daily basis. Certainly this aspect of Home School communication proved to be very well received by parents last year and we would like to improve the range of information available to you this year.
At this point I would like to congratulate our staff and students on the (I)GCSE Results published last week. An incredible 100% of the group achieved at least 5A* - C Grades (the benchmark for measuring school success at this level). This percentage is way in excess of the average figure for State Schools in the UK and is comparable with the very best Preparatory /Independent Schools and British International Schools overseas. It is a measure of not only the quality of the provision in Years 10 and 11 but also the solid foundations laid in earlier years throughout the school.
Work will soon begin on the construction of two new classrooms for the start of the 2011 /2012 School year. The projected growth of the Key Stage 3 and 4 Department together with the possible introduction of the IB Diploma programme for Year 12 and Year 13 students is an exciting development.
I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible over the forthcoming weeks and hope that you all have a very successful start to the school year.
Ian Jones
Headteacher
