China Challenge

Hi This is Matt’s Dad. Please can you tell him his login is his first and surname written all as one word and I have reset his password to the usual. So he has no excuse for not posting news and pictures of his trip.

CHINA CHALLENGE : VIDEO SESSIONS

Mrs Fisher will be running 2 sessions during Activity Time to help you prepare your video presentations which you will be showing to the pupils at Aurora School.Please make sure that you put the dates down in your planners and that everyone in your team attends.

Mrs Fisher will meet you on these days at 1250pm outside the English Faculty Office :

Tuesday 28^th February

Tuesday 6^th March

Remember that you will need to have completed your short videos by Tuesday 13 March when each team will present them at our team briefing on that day.

Thank you.

Following yesterday’s team meeting please find attached a summary of what we discuss along with a copy of the Video Brief (which you will find on page 2) to help with your team’s preparations for the mini video presentations.

Team Meeting Minutes 070212 & Video Brief

1. Chinese visa application form V 2011A : please could parents complete this form on behalf of their son/daughter.   Chinese visa application form V 2011A
2. How to fill in Visa Application form : please read this document which provides guidance on how to complete the application.   How to fill in Visa Application form
3. Exemplar Visa Application form: please read this document which will help you fill in a number of areas on the form.  Exemplar Visa Application form
4. Chinese visa supplementary form V 2011B : this form is only applicable to those who do not hold a UK passport.   Chinese visa supplementary form V 2011B

With the Culture Zone evening coming up next Tuesday evening (7^th Feb) there will be an opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have/hand in completed forms.

Please note that passports will need to accompany the visa applications so please could everything be handed in to me by midday 1^st March at the latest so that Jessi Yi has them in time to take them to the Embassy.

Many thanks.

• ITINERARY – Here you will find full details of the trip.St Bart’s EST detailed schedule Feb 2012 v4 0

• Q&A – This will be a working document to which questions and answers will be added as and when they come up.  We hope that it will also address issues raised following the parent/student questionnaire feedback.  Many thanks for these.  If you have anything you would like to add please email me. Questions & Answers v2

All documents will be available to view on the Blog.  If any of you are experiencing problems accessing it please let me know so that we can sort it out for you.

PAYMENT REMINDER : Just a quick reminder too that the penultimate payment of £245 is due today 1^st February 2012.  Thank you.

Dear Parents and Students

Happy New Year everyone!  We hope you all had a good Christmas.

Preparations are continuing in readiness for the trip and we had our first meeting of 2012 with all the teams yesterday.

Here are the minutes to keep everyone up to date with progress so far and what is coming up Team Meeting Minutes 100112

Teams : please make a note of the action points we discussed at the meeting.

Dear Parents and Students

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and commitment to the Study Tour.  We are seeking to make the tour a valuable, exciting and memorable experience.  To help us we would ask you to spare us some of your time over the holiday period to answer our short questionnaire.  As you will see there is one for Parents and one for Students.  Please return to agibbs@stbarts.co.uk by 9am Friday 6th January 2012.

Questionnaire Parents

Questionnaire Students

In addition we have a number of important dates for you to make a note of in the run up to our departure:

Dates for diary 2012

Stuart Robinson, Jessi Yi, Mr Sharpe, Mrs Fisher, Ms Oxner and Mrs Gibbs would all like to wish you and your family a very Happy Christmas.

We know the students and staff on the Tour will have an exciting New Year.

Craft Fair

Congratulations to all our teams who are successfully raising money but also learning about the reality of enterprise.  Our thanks to parents for all their support.  I was pleased to hear that the Red Team’s dragon had been fed before it attended the Craft Fair!

Activity Time Sale : Tuesday 6 December in the Hub.

An opportunity for all the teams to sell any remaining merchandise.  Please give Mrs Gibbs an outline of what you plan to sell by tomorrow, Friday 2 December.  There will be one table per team.  An announcement will be made in the Monday morning notices to alert staff and students to the sale and repeated on Tuesday.  Staff will be on hand to supervise.

Payment schedule.

Thursday 1st December is our next payment date when £245 is due. Please use Parent Pay. If you have any problems please contact jsmith1@stbarts.co.uk in the finance department.

S J Robinson

There will be an opportunity coming up for you to sell any of your remaining merchandise during Activity Time on Tuesday 6^th December should you wish to take up this offer.

A table will be set up for each team in the hub and you will be able to take advantage of making some additional sales before Christmas – please could you let Mrs Gibbs know what you plan to sell by 1pm Friday 2^nd December.  An announcement will then be issued to the school via the 8.30 notices on Monday 5^th so that students and staff will be aware and bring in their pocket money on the day!  Members of staff will be on hand to supervise.

Red Team – please note that unfortunately we will not be able to make use of the Dragon as there will be too many people in the hub at this busy time of the day.

Team Briefing : Tuesday 8 November

Thank you to everyone who attended.  Let’s see if we can get 100% attendance at the next team briefing on 10th January.

Mr Robinson congratulated the Blue team on their presentation at the Culture Zone event and congratulated everyone on the stalls/marketing at that event and on the car wash on 31 October.

Craft Fair Sunday 13 November

We are grateful to the PA for giving our Study Tour a table free of charge. Teams have been allocated a selling time at the Fair in accordance with the rota issued at Tuesday’s team briefing – see blog below .Obviously, if we can reduce the clearing up and setting up times there will more time for selling.

Best of luck to everyone.

Payment schedule

Sincere thanks for paying promptly in October. The next payment date is 1st December.