We were delighted to welcome the newest members of the ICHK community to school.

Our new students completed an induction programme aimed at helping them to settle into school with confidence.

A programme for all year groups was carefully planned, to minimise any anxiety and stimulate an excitement for learning.

In Year 7, students joined their new form groups and enjoyed a series of fun, team building activities.

During the day, they proved to be good listeners and enthusiastic learners, and met with their tutors, their classmates, along with Head of Year and Transitions teacher Nelly Loi-Fong, who will be playing a key role in their Year 7 experience.

Nelly will be working every week with all the students. Her role is in line with our commitment, through our 5+1 pastoral model, to the work of educational philosopher Kieran Egan. This states that children slowly climb through five different ecological zones as they journey to adulthood. In each zone, they come to understand the world in different ways.

As students move from primary to secondary, they begin to get the first intimations of the shift from the ‘Romantic’ phase to the ‘Philosophic’ phase, and Nelly’s role will be to support the Year 7s as they start to make that transition.

Over the next few weeks, the Year 7s will get to know their teachers better, along with their new classmates, finding themselves in an environment of safety and trust, mutual understanding and shared respect.

They will discover a new curriculum, with many exciting subjects that they will have not encountered before. They will be spending time learning about their own well-being, how to guide their attention, how to regulate their mood, how to recognise when something is becoming difficult and what to do about it, and how to effect change.

They will also be learning that there are five simple words at the heart of everything we do at ICHK Secondary – work hard and be nice.

With these words, we will be encouraging them every day to work hard at being who they want to be.

All this amounts to our Year 7 training to become what we call “happy, confident, intelligent warriors”.