Click to download the 2021-22 Hillside Calendar. You can also access the school calendar via the ESF App.

1-17 September: K2 to Y1 Transfer Application Period

1-30 September: K1 Admissions Application Period (2019 births)

22 September: Public Holiday (Mid-Autumn Festival)

1 October: Public Holiday (National Day)

11 – 15 October:  Mid Term Break

Dear Parents

Please do take a few minutes to read through this newsletter, as we have several items to share with you.

It has been wonderful to see many of the K1 children arriving independently over the past week, and we’re super proud of how they’ve settled. Many bus children even know how to “beep” their bus cards when they board the school bus. We found the staggered start and zoom connections has helped ease this transition for many. 

The K2 floor continues to buzz with energy and the children are diving right into their Who We Are Unit of Inquiry. For more updates on class happenings, please click on the Class Blog tile on the ESF App to access your child’s class blog. The teachers will be updating the blog fortnightly with some photos to share and provide you with some information on your child’s recent learning in class. 

With the typhoon season approaching, please take note of our inclement weather procedures. In the event of class suspension due to inclement weather, we will be informing parents via the ESF App messaging system as soon as we have confirmation from the Education Bureau. 

Kind regards
Audrey and the Hillside Team

The CHP has provided some guidelines on the evolving situation in Hong Kong. Some schools in HK had to undergo compulsory testing due to outbreaks of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) or influenza-like illnesses (ILI). The CHP has advised that since the symptoms of URTI & ILI are similar to those of COVID, for prudence's sake, any school with more than three cases of absence due to illness with 2+ symptoms of URTI/ ILI consecutively over four days. This could potentially be the suspension of classes for up to five school days and compulsory testing for the entire school. 

As you can appreciate, we want to work with you to ensure that our children and staff remain healthy and safe at school and learning continues in-person undisrupted. We thank you for your cooperation and support in staying vigilant and keeping our community safe. Please do keep unwell children at home to rest before it manifests into a full-blown URTI. Let’s keep up our healthy habits and amp up our vitamins!!

As you might be aware, wellbeing sits at the heart of our school priorities and I am pleased to share with you a visual that illustrates our school priorities for this academic year. These priorities are drawn from staff discussions and stakeholder surveys from the last term.

Wellbeing will be our overarching theme, encompassing diversity, equality and inclusion. Within learning & teaching, our focus will be on enhancing play and inquiry, learner agency, and PYP enhancements. We will also continue to work on partnerships and growth through parent engagement, staff development and connections with feeder schools.

Many of these themes will likely continue next year as we restore our learning community from the pandemic. We look forward to more opportunities to connect with our families and enhancing the learning experience for children.

One of the main maintenance projects over the summer was the revamp of our playground. There is a slight delay with some of the works, but we are looking forward to completing the first stage very soon. This will further open up our playground space and extend it to the back to connect with the Bradbury back playground. This will create opportunities for Hillside and Bradbury to share learning space and experiences in the new academic year.

As part of this partnership, our K2 children will participate in weekly PE sessions with the Bradbury PE teacher Sam Howing-Niholls, commencing 21 September. This will initially take place in our blue playground but could also be in the Bradbury Y1 undercover playground, depending on scheduling. Sam will be bringing over some specialist equipment, and our K2 teachers will be working collaboratively with the Bradbury team during these sessions to support the children. We hope this will enhance the children’s PE experience and support the transition to Y1. . 

Thank you to those who attended our first Parent Hack session on Wellbeing - What is wellbeing and why is it important? Maslow before Bloom! As the new school year begins, we need to focus on the children's social and emotional learning, including building connections and relationships, so that they can be the best that they can be.

We truly appreciated your time and participation and we hope you found the session helpful. There was a lot of information to digest, so if you want to review the content or if you’ve missed it, you can access the slides here and the zoom recording here.