By Caroline Breeds
Caroline Breeds - Cbreeds@acs-schools.com
Looking back over the summer, we have celebrated graduation at all four of our campus locations.
Having worked so hard to complete their pre university qualifications, it’s a great afternoon celebrating with family, whilst listening to student speakers, teachers, and keynote speakers. This year our keynote speakers were once again inspiring to all. Here is an insight into a couple of our keynote speakers:
Bonita Norris the youngest woman to scale mount Everest at the age of 22 years old. Bonita talked about the challenges she faced climbing Everest, including securing funding and the physical effort and focus needed to reach the summit. She encouraged all students to keep striving for their dreams despite the obstacles they may face in the future
Rachel Yankey OBE, who had played 129 times for the England women’s football team.
Rachel shared her early year struggles to make it in women’s football as well as the hurdles she had to overcome to get to the top of her career. Her personal sacrifices but more importantly her passion and dedication resulted in success and hence she reminded the students that there are no short cuts to achieving your dreams.
Once again our students gained great results for the IB diploma, with a high percentage across all of our campuses obtaining over 38 points. 38 points is equivalent to over four A grades at A level points. Many of our students have gone on to study at leading universities across the globe and we wish them all well with the next chapter of their journey.
Start of the school year…
We have been extremely busy welcoming new and returning families to our four campus locations. New families are invited to attend our orientation days; these are invaluable for families that are not only new to ACS many have recently arrived in the UK so are at the beginning of the transition process. The orientation days help settle any first day nerves so that students and parents alike are familiar with the campus and are able to meet with staff to ask questions regarding the upcoming year. It concludes with lunch allowing families to socialize in an informal setting.
At the start of each school year we update our bussing map according to demand. Last year we took the decision to run two shuttle busses from London to our Egham campus. This was following parent feedback and has been extremely successful and numbers of students continues to grow on these routes. Here is the link to our bus map.
As many of you know we offer rolling admissions so although we have welcomed many new families we will continue to welcome more families throughout the year. If you have a family that are due to arrive in the UK please do contact our admissions departments to find out our very latest regarding availability for each grade.
Industry news......
The ARP awards dinner was held at the beginning of the Summer, Fergus and I had the opportunity to network with industry peers at St Ermin Hotel. It was wonderful to be there to watch Iain Crichton receive the Lifetime Achievement award. I was lucky enough to meet Iain at one of the first networking events that I attended when starting with ACS, he was always there to introduce me to different contacts at networking events, which I very much appreciated. We always look forward to seeing Iain at our relocation events, he is a keen supporter, we look forward to seeing you again soon!
Looking forward......
I am looking forward to welcoming a new contact from the one of the Embassy’s to our Hillingdon campus later this month, if you haven’t visited any of our campuses before or for some years we would be delighted to welcome you, please do contact me to arrange a date.
My colleagues Fergus Rose, Advancement Director and Andrew Kittell, Corporate Relations Director will be attending the Worldwide ERC conference in Seattle. Please find them in the exhibition hall to say hello.
SAVE THE DATE,
December 5th our next relocation event will be our Christmas event at ACS Egham, a great opportunity to meet our interim Dean of Admissions at Egham, Delphine Lenoir, as well as other members of the wider ACS team. We look forward to getting you into the festive spirit! In the meantime, please do contact me if you would like to arrange a campus visit or meeting at your office. I look forward to seeing many of you soon.