Dear Parents
I am delighted to be welcoming you and your family back to Piasau School after what I hope has been an enjoyable holiday. I would also like to send a special welcome our new families. There are 18 families joining us and 22 new children to date. I hope you settle to life in Miri quickly and that your children enjoy all we have to offer.

I would also like to welcome our new teachers this year. We have Miss Karen joining our leadership team in P4. Mr Neil also joins the P4 team. Miss Charlotte is in P5, Miss Jacqueline in P1 and Miss Claire joins us in P6. We also have Mr Matt, Miss Nikki and Miss Shade joining us as trainee teachers.

I come to Piasau School from Headship of a similar sized school in Derbyshire, England where I have been for 4½ years. Whilst my recent leadership experience has been UK based, developing international mindedness has always been a huge passion. The main project I was working on in my last school was to develop international awareness in our children and we were one of the first schools to take part in the British Council’s project “Connecting Classrooms” where we linked with 3 schools in Ghana and 3 schools in Zimbabwe. We hosted six staff from these schools for a week and the children were taken on an amazing learning journey with them which was further extended through joint curriculum topics; children writing to each other and preparing books on their everyday lives. As Spanish was the modern foreign language we chose for our children to learn, we linked with a school in Madrid so that the children could apply what they had learned to “real” communication with other children. It gave a purpose to their learning and hugely increased their motivation and engagement. At Piasau School I am looking forward to seeing the International Primary Curriculum in practice and the language opportunities available to the children in what is a truly international school.

 I am so pleased to finally be here! There have been many months of waiting and wondering, but when I came to visit the school in May, I could see what a special place Piasau School is. There is a fantastic team of experienced and very professional teachers who love teaching and helping your children to engage in exciting learning experiences.  I could also see during my visit how much Mr John and the staff had done to bring the school to where it is now – achieving the top award for a learning focussed school only last year and being the first shell school to achieve this accolade. I have inherited a super school, super children and super staff and look forward to building on previous successes to take the school to new heights.
I would like to thank all those parents who have made a special effort to come into school to meet me over the past few days. It has made me feel very welcome and I thank you for this. As before, we still have an open door policy so please do not hesitate to come and see me if you need. Over the next few weeks there will be many new faces for me to get to know but I really do look forward to meeting everyone soon.
Yours sincerely,

Yvette Jeffrey
Headteacher