Dear Parents,
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and our students a pleasant and enjoyable summer.
If you have been a regular visitor to our website, you will be aware of all of the activities and events, which have made this a very busy school year for the students and staff.
The school calendar is due to be posted on the website. Once again, we will have two school closure days for the secondary school on Monday 11th November 2019 and on Thursday 30th January 2020. These days are sanctioned by the Department of Education and Skills and are compulsory for all teachers teaching the new junior certificate subject specifications.
In May of this year, we marked the milestone of the first centrally set exams from the German Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) for the Sek-I class. Congratulations to all pupils who sat the exams on your excellent results. It was a lot of hard work and dedication to manage the demands of two educational programmes. We, as a school community, are extremely proud of their achievements.
In eighth class, pupils will have the benefit of a scheduled KL period, which up to now was only timetabled for seventh class in the junior cycle. A request for such a period was submitted on behalf of students through their representative on the Steering Committee. It is a valuable resource to allow classes scheduled regular time with their class teachers and it will support the compulsory Wellbeing programme in the school. We have also made some changes to the Transition Year curriculum and have consulted with pupils regarding choices for modules. Art and Music Technology have replaced Conflict Studies and Celtic Studies. There will be some new workshops offered and we hope that the curricular changes will prove more engaging for pupils coming into the transition year in 2019.
I would like to thank all parents who responded to our whole school questionnaire. This was an opportunity for us to get direct feedback from you on aspects of the school, which affect you and your children. Overall satisfaction with the school is very high, however, there are areas you and we have identified for improvement. The results can be viewed in the parent login portal on the website. We have had several advisory/inspection visits from Germany and the Department of Education and Skills. The combined input from parents, pupils, external inspectors and advisors will be used to inform our school development, evaluation and improvement plans for the next school year.
Next year will see a number of staff changes in St Kilian’s. I would like to take this opportunity to bid farewell to Herr Gürges. He will be greatly missed by pupils and colleagues. His replacement is Frau Bosse and she has already been on a reconnaissance visit to the school to prepare herself for her start in the new academic year. We look forward to working with her. We also have another colleague starting in September. Frau Anne Sieber is coming to us from the German School in Ecuador and she will be teaching Biology in the Sek-1 programme and German.
Ms Claire Defaux will be returning from career break and this means that we have to bid farewell to Monsieur Perrot who replaced her for the year. We thank him for his contribution to teaching and learning in St Kilian’s over the last year.
I would particularly like to thank the members of the Student Council who did a wonderful job this past school year. Their input into the organisation and life of the school is extremely important to us and I would encourage pupils to consider putting themselves forward for election to become class representatives.
Finally, I would like to thank you for your continued support and for the time and effort many of you give to supporting the essential work of the school and staff. Vielen Dank!
As always, there will be summer works taking place in the school over the holidays.
I wish you all an enjoyable and hopefully a sun filled and relaxing summer.
Kind regards,
Alice Lynch
Principal
