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Quarter Three, 2007
Message from the Regional Director
Welcome back to many of our IB schools – we wish you all a good start to the new academic year and trust that your students and teachers had an enjoyable and safe mid-year vacation.
A Risky Business
Modelling our commitment to ongoing learning, the Regional Office staff have in recent months undertaken both Management Training and Risk Training. We have even finished compiling our “Risk Register”.
Chrissie Webber leading the Management Training in June in the Singapore Office
Stephen Maycock training the Risk Taking team at the beginning of August
Governance and Regional Council
IB Asia Pacific will be hosting the meetings of the Council of Foundation and its associated committees in Singapore at the end of November 2007. The IB Council of Foundation has recently undertaken a comprehensive review of Governance and of the Management Advisory bodies that serve the organization. As an outcome of this review, a new management advisory body will be formed in each of the regions – the Regional Council. In the first instance this group will be constituted by amalgamating the two groups – the RHRC and the RAC.
The Regional Council will meet for the first time as a body from 29 November – 1 December 2007 in conjunction with the Governance meetings.
Changing Coordinator Details on IBIS
As it is the start of another academic year for many of you and consequently there will have been changes of personnel, please be reminded that school coordinators are responsible and must update names/email addresses of principals and coordinators in IBIS. We appreciate being informed at the Regional Office but the actual changes in the system should be made by the school coordinator.
For security reasons, before IBIS/IBNET in Cardiff is able to amend the details to show that you are the new coordinator and to issue an IBNET account, IB Cardiff will require a signed fax from the principal of the school confirming the details of the change of coordinator.
The fax should provide information of the new coordinator and also the coordinator' email address. On receipt of this Cardiff will arrange for our databases to be updated and will create an IBNET account for you, the details of which will be sent by email.
Please mark the fax for attention by Andrew Skillern and send to +44 2920 54 7778.
IB Diploma Results
Again this year we want to encourage schools to ensure that parents and students understand their options if they do not achieve their anticipated grades and this is going to impact University entrance. Schools should have coordinators and advisors available after the release of results to support students in this situation. Both the regional office and Cardiff still receive a significant amount of direct contact from parents and students and this places pressure on our capacity to respond.
We do also wish schools to know that it is not the policy of the IB to release details of other schools results nor to promote competitiveness by way of “league table” comparisons. Educationally because of the vast differences between schools and their intakes globally such comparisons can be meaningless and certainly they are generally irrelevant out of context.
22nd IB Asia Pacific Annual Regional Conference
5-9 October 2007, Singapore
Support for this years Regional Conference has been strong. Please note though that registrations are still open. The IBAP Regional Conference this year will focus on an aspect of this theme : “Educating for Environmental Sustainability”. Appreciating the irony of running a Conference on this theme, registration details do include advice and advocacy for participants who wish to offset their travel and contribute to making this a carbon neutral event.
Fees increases
Much information was published last October regarding Fee increases for PYP and MYP that come into effect from 1 September. Regionally we have undertaken a service costing exercise with respect to Authorisation Fees. The outcome of this is a more realistic charge particularly for part B application fees to cover the administrative costs associated with the reviewing of the application and supporting documentation, arranging the authorization visit, staff time on the authorisation visit itself, preparation and submission of the authorization report and processing of the report by both the Regional Office and Headquarters. Details of the Regional Office Fees effective from September for authorization are attached.
eMail Protocol
The increasing volume of incoming email is still an ongoing challenge for us. Please can we respectfully request that if an email is sent to one generic email point that it is not copied to multiple other generic or specific emails. It will be forwarded on! We also get a lot of emails from yahoo or hotmail accounts – please can correspondents note their school name and code on such emails as it is not always possible to know where you are from.
We invite schools to provide articles to the fourth quarter 2007 IBAP Newsletter with the latest happenings at your school or if there are any special events, please email ibap@ibo.org by 20 October 2007.
Our best wishes to you all.
Judith Guy, Regional Director
IB Asia Pacific
Email: ibap@ibo.org
ALERT!
Are you alerting your colleagues and school community to our enewsletter?
Please can we have your support in doing this??
Staff
Changes
Patrick Ritter has assumed the role of MYP Regional Manager from 1 August 2007.
Mignon Weckert has assumed the role of PYP Regional Manager effective from 1 August 2007.
Welcome
A warm welcome to Mario Gauci and Bill Fenton who have joined an expanded PYP team as Associates from 1 August.
Curtis Beaverford also joined us on 1 August.
Suryanie Ismail and Roy Wee both joined the Projects Team. Suryanie has taken on the role of STS (Schools to Schools) Service Projects Officer and Roy will be responsible for development and maintenance of the STS website.
HELP TO MAKE THIS
(and other IB events)
CARBON NEUTRAL:
A flight from Beijing to
Singapore covers 8996 Km and produces 1 tonne of CO2.
Melbourne to Singapore covers 12082 Km and produces 1.3 tonnes of CO2.
You can offset your flight
emissions with groups such as:
• Carbonfund.org carbon offsets cost just US$5.50 per metric ton
(www.carbonfund.org) or
• The CarbonNeutral Company has options for you to offset