COMMUNITY UPDATE DIRECTOR’S UPDATE Dear Community Members, As you know, through ISB’s personalised curricula, teaching practices, and breadth of cocurricular offerings, we are working to dispel the myth that academic excellence and high inclusivity are mutually exclusive. For us, striving for academic excellence is not about averages, but about each child receiving the right level of challenge and support needed to reach their potential. This week, during our two community sessions, I shared many of the impressive achievements of our students and was also able to convey the ways in which we are striving to improve the learning results for each and every child.
As a school, we can point to many different areas of achievement, including our latest MAP analysis from last year which shows high levels of growth and achievement for students across our sections. One particularly impressive statistic is that over 70% of ES and MS students show both high growth and high achievement for Maths, which is the type of result that is the envy of many schools around the world. We also observed that, on average, students who have studied at ISB for more than three years perform better on MAP testing in Maths than students who have just joined our community. While averages like these are impressive, what is far more important to us is that we know how each of our students is performing, and that we know how we can support and challenge each individual learner to grow and improve. This is the hallmark of great education, and for us that means an increasingly personalised approach. We also know that our students have interests and passions in many areas, and another part of our job is ensuring they can learn more about the world and develop new skills. We want them to discover and nurture their emerging talents. In an upcoming issue, we are going to share an example of this in the form of a new programme called “Pathways to Excellence”, which is a way of providing exceptional support and challenge for students focusing on Arts, Athletics, and STEM. In our Strategy for the Future, one of our pillars is called Exceptional Education. As we look to the future, we are committed to providing an even stronger academic programme and continuing to develop our extra-curricular offerings, while also ensuring the right conditions exist to support individual wellbeing. Our work at ISB is very important. Thank you to all our parents for your ongoing support as we pursue our mission of everyone included, challenged, and successful. Kind regards,
James MacDonald ISB Director