Dear Parents and Guardians,
How wonderful it is to walk through the College on a special day like today and see the students busily going about their daily activities wearing their hanboks, Korea’s traditional attire, cheongsams or brightest red clothes for our Seollal celebrations. So many colours and so many smiles.
There were special Lunar New Year activities occurring throughout the day, culminating in a spectacular whole school special assembly in the Gym with dazzling performances for our whole community to enjoy. Every performance, from our youngest dancers and singers to our MCs and poetry readers, was simply outstanding. Thank you to Ms Wen and the entire Mandarin department for making this year’s Lunar New Year assembly a resounding success, and thank you to all our young students who put on such a great performance for us.
This has been a week of skiing for our Year 3 to Year 6 students. Each day, a different year group had the opportunity to hit the slopes and enjoy some winter fun. Judging by the photos and the excited first-hand reports I have received from students, it’s clear the trips went brilliantly. A special thank you to our Head of Outdoor Education, Ms. Holly Brigham, for all the hard work that went into making these trips possible. They are truly unforgettable experiences for our students.
I would like to recognise and celebrate the achievements of our Year 11 to Year 13 students, who received some incredible results from the UKMT Mathematics Challenge. 39% of the entrants from Dulwich College Seoul won a Gold Award, placing them among the top 10% globally. A special congratulations to Tildin H in Year 12, and Jaewook K in Year 10 for qualifying for the even more challenging follow-up event, the British Mathematical Olympiad.
Academic excellence is one of our core values and so it is particularly gratifying for us as educators to see our efforts and the efforts of our students rewarded with such exceptional results. Please see the Senior School section of this e-update to read more about the UKMT Mathematics Challenge results from our Head of Mathematics, Ms. Emma Chamberlain.
It was a pleasure to host Crispian Farrow and Mark Haskins from EiM on campus this week. During their visit, we engaged in productive discussions on how to optimise our available technology for achieving our mission and fostering greater collaboration within our Dulwich family of schools.
Our Friends of Dulwich (FoD) volunteer parent group has made some changes to the used uniform sale they normally organise a few times a year. Due to popular demand, FoD will now use its monthly coffee mornings as a venue to have its popular used uniform sale and used book sale on an ongoing basis. Please keep in mind they will now be alternating between the two, starting with the Coffee Morning/Used Uniform Sale combination event on 9 February. The following month in March, the coffee morning will be combined with the Used Book Sale (9 March). Early Spring Cleaners, please take note: FoD will be accepting gently used books and uniforms year-round so feel free to place them in the bin located in the foyer and atrium. It will also sort uniforms in the Lost & Found bin without name labels and add them to the sale items.
We are excited for our next Dulwich Talk on 25 January at 1.40pm featuring our very first MZ Generation speaker, Youjin Choi, co-founder and CEO of Classum. Our students in Year 10, Year 11 and Year 13 will be joining us and I hope you can make it too. Learn more about the speaker in our Whole School section.
On another note, we are cautiously optimistic about the news today that the government will remove indoor mask mandates with a few exceptions beginning 30 January 2023. We will assess how this will impact our College’s own guidelines and revert back to our community shortly.
I would like to wish all of our Dulwich College Seoul community a Happy Year of the Rabbit and hope you have a restful break.
With my best wishes,
Mr Guðmundur Hegner Jónsson
Head of College