The Week Ahead

Senior School Matters

Top international schools are often known for more than just academic excellence. Pupils at the top schools will experience many other golden opportunities to develop their skills and abilities in many exciting extra-curricular environments beyond the classroom. We look forward to the resumption of learning beyond the confines of the classroom, and I am excited to let you know that we are already hatching some inspiring plans for our pupils. For example, COBIS and FOBISIA have now resumed offering face-to-face sport, music, debate and drama events around Asia. We are genuinely excited about the potential of being able to send teams of Wellingtonians from Hangzhou to participate and compete.

The best international schools also always have an organised, supportive and dynamic parent association, which assists the school with various activities and functions, often serving as a true hub for the entire community. Here at Wellington College International Hangzhou, we are no different, with Friends of Wellington groups associated with each Wellington College school worldwide. In a recent conversation with Ms. Ivey Wang, Principal of Hiba Academy Hangzhou, we have agreed to merge and collaborate in creating a cooperative parent association across our wonderful Hangzhou campus, which we hope will offer even more diverse and exciting opportunities for parental participation and community development.

If you want to know more about our new parent association or even volunteer to be one of our parent community leaders, please get in touch with us.

Stewart Brown

Head of Senior School

Sixth Form Matters

On Thursday, we had a wonderful session with Molly Hammond, a Physics student at the University of Oxford. She spoke to over 100 pupils and parents about how she built up her university profile, prepared for the admissions test and interview and about her life as a student at one of the best universities in the world. Our pupils were fascinated with how Molly's application stood out above her peers by independently feeding her thirst for knowledge through reading Physics related texts. It was a surprise to our audience to learn that competitions did not feature highly in her university profile. 

I believe the impact of having guest speakers in our pupils' positions recently is immeasurable. Pupils can easily relate to them and see how their actions could lead to a similar pathway. Molly did a fantastic job of raising aspirations and was an inspiration to all.

Hatty Leung

Head of Sixth Form

Primary School Matters

We are incredibly proud to announce that both our upper primary and secondary school pupils will be participating in an exciting international maths competition next week. The FOBISIA code-breaking challenge will feature over 25 top international schools in Asia, with over 1000 pupils participating. 

This competition has an engaging format that means each competitor will have a range of codes to solve; only when they solve the first code can they progress to the next. Finally, we will find out who will be able to solve them all and reach the top of the competition leader board.

Whilst this competition will be highly enjoyable for pupils and teachers alike, there are other reasons to join. Firstly, it will help pupils to see the real-life uses of maths and to realise, for example, that a team of mathematicians cracked the Enigma code. In other words, mathematicians were instrumental in winning World War 2. Secondly, a close link between mathematics and code-breaking exists. The skills that make talented mathematicians: problem-solving, logical thought and perseverance are the same skills that make great code breakers. The code-breaking challenge will be a fantastic chance to hone these skills further.

We see this competition as an excellent opportunity to share our passion for maths with pupils in our school. So we wish all our young mathematicians and those from around Asia good luck in their challenge.

Russell Clarke

Head of Primary Maths 

Performing Arts Matters

Last academic year, some of our Wellington College International Hangzhou Choir participated in the SingUp Day project. Led by Mr Perkinton, the children learnt a commissioned song based on kindness. All the children enjoyed singing the song.

SingUp is an online organisation and resource from the UK that places singing at the heart of teaching. It is one of the best in the world. Every year, they do "SingUp Day", on which all participating schools across the globe sing a song, specially commissioned, to celebrate music, unity, kindness, and many other values. These performances are then recorded and sent to the SingUp team, selecting the best submissions and creating a digital choir.

We are fortunate to have been selected along with 94 other schools worldwide. Along with Hiba Academy Hangzhou, we are proudly the only schools representing China. Please note that 95 schools are featured in the video as a digital choir; therefore, we feature with other schools in the video shots. 

Please see the following times if you want to view our children in the digital choir. 

·       0:56– 1:00. HSH and WCIH Choir 

·       2:10– 2:13. WCIH Choir

·       3:36– 3:39. HSH and WCIH Choir

·       Credits: HSH 4:17 and WCIH 4:40

As a school, we are proud to participate in events that unite the community through strong values like kindness. We look forward to SingUp Day 2023.

Alejandro Montoya 

Director of Performing Arts

Library Matters

Panda Book Awards

Next week, we will launch the Panda Book Awards with our pupils. This is a pupil-voted award that has been running in China since 2008. The award focuses on characters, stories and authors with links to Asia, although it also incorporates other stories from around the world. 

The awards have different categories for each age group. We have received the first delivery of books into our libraries, and more books will arrive over the next few weeks. If pupils would like to purchase copies, they may do so from Obidos.cn. The books can be seen in the images below.  

The library team and teachers will introduce these books to pupils over the next few months, and our pupils will vote for their favourites after the Chinese New Year. 

Bronwen Duffield

Head Librarian

Sport Matters

Fixture results

Next week's fixtures

Nathan Witter
Director of Sports