Summer Update from the Principal

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone has had a relaxing summer holiday and your families are safe and well.

As we enter the final two weeks of preparations for our return to school, I wanted to provide you with an update on our planning in order to welcome your children. Our learning from the Summer Term is to be agile in our responses to the circumstances and guidance which change on an almost daily basis, in order to ensure that our children have the best and most relevant educational experience possible to prepare them for their future. We look forward to another successful academic year together at the British International School of Ljubljana.

Safety is our number one priority at school and we continue to check and follow the latest guidance available (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, WHO, etc).

As we reopen the school, we will start with the following procedures in place on a temporary basis and will review on a regular basis:

1. Sanitation guidelines, handwash and antibacterial gels will continue to be used throughout the school.
2. Declaration forms will be compulsory for all students to be handed in at reception.
3. Masks for staff in corridors and common areas will be worn.
4. Lunches will be delivered to classrooms.
5. No large gatherings of students and teachers will be planned for indoors.
6. Early Years Parents can follow the settling in period instructions for the first week, allowed on site wearing masks.
7. Year 1 Parents can accompany children on the first week to the playground, no mask needed on the playground.
8. Parents in the building by appointment only.

The following areas may be updated individually should further information from the sources above be confirmed:

• Masks for Secondary students.
• Masks for all staff in offices/smaller spaces.
• External Trips to public indoor sites.
• After-school clubs.
• Presentations for parents/calendared events (some events may take place in smaller groups at school, outdoors at school, virtually, etc)
• Possible split classes.

Further guidance on a staggered start for all students may be made if guidance is provided by the Ministry of Health/Education over the coming week for all schools in Slovenia.

Our catering company will continue to offer a high-quality provision and systems have been put in place to comply with the appropriate guidelines. Meals will be delivered to relevant classes for children.

Outside of school, our staff continue to follow health advice and avoid attending various types of public gatherings at this time. As professionals, we continue to keep the safety and wellbeing of everyone as a priority.

Over the summer, a group of key staff have focused on the necessary risk assessments and protocols to ensure a safe response with maximum ‘normality’ and participation in all aspects of school life. A full review of the premises have been completed during the past month, including a deep clean, room layouts altered and guidance updated to meet health and safety expectations with a variety of hygiene provision for everyone in the building.

Further information about our facilities, education after Coronavirus and readiness for the coming academic year have recently been published and shared in the media and community.

As you can see from the images below, our new building extension has made significant progress and we can now see various areas completed and the building taking shape. As the construction continues, we will keep you updated through Facebook and other forums.

All our staff have arrived safely and are looking forward to the upcoming academic year. We have sent out letters from the teachers welcoming students into the class, videos form new staff and the photos/bios of all of our teachers. To see all of the staff profiles click here.

To minimise large gatherings of students, staff and parents, we have made the following changes to ourOrientation Day schedule. Each area of the school will be open for parents and students to meet the teachers and look around the premises. The timings are as follows:

• Early Years and Years 1+2: 8.00am – 9.00am
• Years 3-6: 10.00am – 11.00am
• Years 7-13: 13.00pm – 14.00pm

Refreshments will be provided and activities will be held in the playground. Parents are asked to park in the public car park as used for school events and not in the spaces at the entrance to the school/disabled parking.

For our Enrichment Days (3 extra Saturdays), please use the sign-up form if you are interested in registering your children for these days.

• Saturday 22^nd August (Team Building Day)
• Saturday 29^th August (House Sports Day)
• Saturday 5^th September (Activities Day)

We are very proud of the achievements by the students in their IGCSE and A Level examinations. Congratulations to all students! To see the highlight figures, please click here.

We are looking forward to further training and developments in our elearning platform and have arranged a special visitor, Group eLearning Manager, Zsofia Alibaux-Jakab, to coordinate further enhancements of our excellent online provision. Click here for more information.

An email from the Heads of School will be sent out with further information on the items above from Week Beginning Monday 17^thAugust. This will provide specific instructions for year groups and may include further updates on the areas listed above.

I hope this letter helps to outline our plans to welcome your child/children back to the British International School of Ljubljana. We are very excited to see everyone return to the school and I personally look forward to a busy and productive start to the term.

Thank you to all parents for your continued support and encouragement, I look forward to seeing you soon.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal