South Island School

[EduCativ]

South Island is a proud member of the ESF family but this is a unique school with a particular and very special ethos. Put simply, it is our core aspiration that, during their time with us, every individual student makes a positive difference – a difference to their own lives and a difference to the lives of others.
Our students and our outstanding staff team are our two most precious assets. Such is the caliber of our young people, from over 38 different countries, that we believe that there is no limit to what they can achieve. While we have high expectations and are ambitious for our students, we also know that for them to succeed, we need to provide a caring, supportive and challenging environment in which they can grow and flourish. I believe that this is such an environment.
We celebrate a musical solo as warmly as we celebrate a student gaining an A*, a wonderful painting as happily as a top IB score, a great sporting performance as enthusiastically as a place secured at an Ivy League University. We underscore with all of our young people that what matters is not gaining qualifications for their own sake but learning – always being open to personal growth, having a mindset that welcomes and tackles problems, being resilient when times get tough. Our alumni have gone on to all of the world’s elite Universities and many have created brilliant careers for themselves – but hopefully, they also leave here with a set of values, and a perspective on life that leads them to want more than simply the accumulation of wealth.
South Island offers an extraordinary number of opportunities, both within our taught curriculum and beyond. This is a happy school with a great spirit and a sense that anything and everything is possible.
Our purpose at South Island School is to raise consciousness in our school community about the way individuals make a difference in a complex world. Our learning philosophy and environment promote freedom of thought, expression, and action. We educate all students to develop their skills and their deep learning so they can make informed decisions and take action responsibly.
We believe that individual success will be demonstrated when our students are happy, resilient, and curious thinkers who thrive in an inclusive, resourceful, and compassionate community. We aim to offer the opportunities and the guidance for them to become honest, responsible, and courageous citizens. We want all of our actions as a community to promote learning and the holistic concept of sustainable futures.
South Island School is a rich and diverse community. We seek at all times to raise the consciousness of the inter-connectedness of the world and our place within it. We strive to promote freedom of thought, leading to actions that have personal meaning and local or global significance. Students are encouraged, through the curriculum and in their day-to-day school lives, to develop their international mindedness and an appreciation that there are many different perspectives from which to view our human existence.
As we reflect in our Making a Difference philosophy, education for internationalism continues outside the classroom with the intention that providing diverse learning environments allows students to value the world as the ultimate context for their learning. The great majority of our extracurricular activities (for example, Model United Nations and TEDx) and our MaD Service trips (to countries such as Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, and China) provide students with the opportunity to engage in cross-cultural perspectives and issues. Teachers at South Island School understand the importance of supporting students to comprehend and act on needs that may be far from their geographical context – but at the same time not to neglect human and intercultural issues within their environment where inequities and misunderstandings continue to exist.
We celebrate the fact that the diversity within our school community supports students, both in understanding global issues and in developing pluralistic attitudes. We believe that this environment allows our young people to embrace the differences which surround them, almost intuitively at times and without conscious intent. Chinese students dance in Diwali celebrations, Europeans join the Lion Dance Team, our sports teams do not separate on racial lines, our student leaders come from all sections of our community. We promote a wide range of languages through our curriculum (Chinese, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and others) to show an appreciation of multilingualism and as a reflection of our common humanity and our cultural difference.
ib-lp-English-pos-copy or School Philosophy merges completely with the intentions of the IB Learner Profile (see diagram). We see the Learner Profile as the aspirational ‘end’ and the IB Approaches Learning (ATLs) and Service Outcomes as the means to that end. We intend that a graduating SIS student will have a personal profile that shows progress and personal development again all ten elements of the Learner Profile. We do not see that the Learner Profile is a tool, in itself, for measuring progress but that it is a summation of all of the experiences that an SIS leaner is exposed to during school life. The three strands of our curricular offer – academic, pastoral and Values in Action and the personal portfolio that a student will build against each of these three organizers are the tangible record of progression and achievement towards the aspirations of the Learner Profile.
South Island School is part of the English Schools Foundation of 22 Schools in Hong Kong that operates within the ESF government ordinance.
The school is accountable to the Board of Governors (Executive Committee) of ESF but has its own School Council (local Governing Body) comprised of parents, community members, staff, and students. The Chair of the School Council is an independent person and is appointed to the school by the board of Governors. The School Council oversees the strategic direction and the performance of the school.
The Council meets around six times per year. It has two sub-committees, namely Finance and Personnel (FP) and Learning and Professional Development (LPD) both chaired by community representatives. Among other matters, the FP sub-committee reviews the school’s annual budget and recommends acceptance to the full council. It also reviews personnel matters and considers health and safety issues. The LPD sub-committee’s work is more aimed at, inter alia, curriculum development, teaching methods, and examination performance.

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