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The Principal's Newsletter

Hanova becomes Authorised IB World School for its Diploma Programme (DP)!

By Mr Martin Hughes

Dear Parents and

A Happy New Year to you all - families of both returning and new students.  I hope you had a lovely Christmas (if you celebrate it in your family or culture) or at least you were able to enjoy some parts of the holiday with your children.

Hanova is an IB World School for the Diploma Programme!

“On behalf of the International Baccalaureate (IB), it is my privilege to inform you that Xi’an Hanova International School is to become an authorized IB World School, Diploma Programme (DP).

Congratulations on your considerable accomplishment.

We commend your school’s educators, administrators, students and families for choosing to offer the DP.

Best wishes as you embark on your journey with the DP. We look forward to working closely with you to realize our shared vision of a better and more peaceful world, achieved through intercultural understanding and respect.

Sincerely yours,”                                                                                                                        

Andrew Macdonald                                                                                                                  

Chief Schools Officer

We are delighted to confirm that Hanova is now fully authorised by the International Baccalaureate (IB) to deliver the Diploma Programme to our students in our new status as an IB World School for the Diploma Programme - the World gold standard for entry into universities.

We are the only school – local or international – in Xi’an and, indeed, the whole of central and northwestern China to be authorised to offer the IB Diploma Programme.  Our current Year 11 students will commence their journey from August 2015.

A huge thank you to all of those in the school community – parents, students and, of course, teachers, support staff and Board – that have enabled us to achieve this historic moment in the development of the school.  This is a really wonderful achievement to celebrate. Our particular thanks go to Mr Robert Muntzer (Deputy Principal and IB DP Coordinator) who has led the school and his team to achieve this so soon after the opening of the school.  This has been a huge task in such a short period that has not only required excellent leadership and a lot of work for the Diploma teachers to be, but also huge financial commitment and support from the Board.

The final report from the IB authorisation process is a glowing testimonial to all the efforts made by the Hanova community involved in this historical achievement. Here are a few of the commendations made by IB:

“The school has a commitment to community, diversity, and building global citizens as reflected in their published statements of mission and philosophy. All members of the school community are committed to the mission of the school and the mission and philosophy of the IB.”

“The governing body, pedagogical leadership, and staff are well informed and show an across the board commitment to the IB philosophy.”

“The school has worked very hard to recruit and retain qualified staff.”

“The school has clearly scheduled collaborative planning blocks in the teacher schedules which is of material assistance to the practice of collaborative planning within the school and allows collaborative planning to be both regular and systematic.”

“The school places a high importance of language learning and is committed to making multiple languages available to the students. Chinese as a second language is highly valued.”

These are just a few comments made by the DP authorisation visitors. Hanova intends to celebrate this momentous achievement by the school community in a number of ways over the next few weeks. One of these planned events will be in honour of the students, parents, teachers and administrators who contributed so much to our success. More details will follow.

In the meantime, parents and students are encouraged to visit our school web-site that has been considerably up-dated with information about the IB Diploma.

Staffing:

Mr Tony Manning from New Zealand, an experienced Primary teacher, arrived in Xi’an on 30th December.  Mr Manning will be taking over the role of Homeroom teacher for Y5, owing to the unexpected departure for personal reasons of Mr Reinier Jessurun. 

MYP Assessment Workshop. At the end of last term, you will have received your child’s report cards through Managebac, giving a comprehensive overview of your child’s progress at Hanova. A Middle Years Programme (MYP) Assessment workshop was due to run on Friday 12th December last term that would give parents information which would allow them to understand our assessment practices and the grading system implemented by the IB.

This workshop, however, was postponed till January, as many parents were unable to attend the session in December.  As a consequence, this has been rescheduled for Thursday 15th January and will take place between 9am-10am in the library at Hanova.

We sincerely hope to see parents there, in order to learn more about assessment and have any assessment related questions answered.

Best regards,

Martin Hughes

 

Forthcoming events                

Monday, 5th                   First day of second semester

Thursday, 15th               MYP Assessment workshop for parents 9am

Friday, 16th                    PYP reports to be emailed to parents

Wednesday, 21st          ECA block 2 starts

February

Tuesday, 3rd                   Parent consultations 3:30-5pm

Wednesday, 4th            Parent consultations 3:30-7pm


About the Author


Martin Hughes

Former School Principal

Mr Martin Hughes was the founding Principal of Hanova from 2012-15. Prior to his time at Hanova, he already had 23 years of experience as Principal in the UK and China at five different schools - including posts at Wuxi EtonHouse and EtonHouse's flagship Suzhou school. During his time as founding Principal at Hanova, he helped support the initial IB Diploma Programme authorisation (2014) and used his educational vision to help plant our then brand new school on a firm foundation. Under his leadership, Hanova's motto emerged, "Enabling children to become independent, creative and lifelong learners!"


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