Parent Grade Organisation

Thank you to all those parents who have volunteered to continue with their role as Parent Grade Representative. Meetings for PGRs will take place after the Eid holiday. However some meetings have already taken place. Lower Primary have already have already made ambitious plans to utilize their volunteers. As well as helping organize trips they are setting up a rota of parents to help in the new Primary Library, with language support and classroom assistance.

They also have brainstormed ideas about running book clubs, helping with resource management, making “Story Bags” starting a “Donate a book on your Birthday” initiative and advising on upgrading the outdoor play areas. We thank Misha Daud for all of her efforts for making this an early positive start.
We still have vacancies in the following grades KG2G, KG2Y 3W, 4R, 4W, 5G, 5W, 6G, 6R, 6W, 7R, 7W, 8B, 8R, 8W, 9B, 9G, 9W.

If anyone can spare the time to volunteer to represent any of the above then please contact me by clicking on this link or by telephoning me on 24546362.

Awards Ceremony

It was great to see so many proud parents at an awards ceremony held at The Intercontinental Hotel on Wednesday 4th October 2006. The six students who received awards from The Chairman of The Board of Trustees of The Sultan’s School, Liwa Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Riyami, all achieved the highest grades awarded by The University of Cambridge International Examination Board of A and A* in their portfolio of results. They were

Ghalia Al-Sharji 2A*, 5A, 1B
Khadija Al-Adawi 2A*, 4A, 2B
Maryam Al-Balushi 7A, 1B
Ali Al-Marhubi 1A*, 4A, 3B
Shaima Al-Ghafri 1A*, 3A, 4B
Iftial Al-Adawi 1A*, 2A, 5B

The Principal, John Birchall commented “The Academic year 2005-2006 has once again brought great success for students following various programmes at The Sultan's School and for the members of the teaching staff, The Board of Trustees and myself a great sense of professional satisfaction and pride that our efforts have made such an outcome possible.

The Chairman Liwa Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Riyami added his congratulations and said that “the School was also breaking new ground for the benefit of the Sultanate” Abdul Aziz Al-Rawahi of The Ministry of Education commented “Our Omani students have the capability to compete with the best of students at an international level” and later that “These outstanding results also reflect well on The Ministry and the country’s private schools in their endeavour of keeping up with the most recent developments in education from around the world”

Ghalia Al-Sharji speaking on behalf of the students expressed the view that “The students’ success emanated from the support of their teachers and the healthy competitive spirit among themselves”

The Principal also mentioned the Omani General Certificate Examinations Results as The Sultan's School bade farewell to their association with the Omani General Certificate bilingual examination on a high note. The four top achieving students were

Name                            Result       Destination
Abdullah Al-Balushi       96%        University of Pennsylvania USA (Marine Engineering)
Nada Al-Hosny            94%        University of Cardiff UK (Medicine)
Jokha Al-Busaidy         94%        University of Nottingham (Engineering)
Amira Al Bahri             94%        University of Toronto, Canada (Economics)

The press conference ended on a forward looking note to this time next year when the School will hopefully be celebrating the same level of success in The International Diploma Examinations.

On the first page of our newsletter The Principal mentions a “buzz” that is going around the school which emanates from our vibrant community. The Development and Admissions Office has dealt with a growing outside interest both nationally and internationally as the School’s reputation gains momentum.

In the past few months we have had several distinguished visitors ranging from ambassadors and educators to The “Blue Peter” film crew from the BBC who are currently filming “A Day in the Life” of one of our students. This programme is expected to be watched by people from all over the world.

The Admissions Office received over 430+ applications for places in the school this year. Unfortunately we could only award just over 200 new places even by expanding Kindergarten I to a three class entry. As a result of this we have a waiting list for several grades at present. As a consequence of this demand our first admissions test date on 22 March may only be open to siblings and children of our Alumni wishing to apply for certain grades. If you have any friends or relatives who are thinking of applying for places at the School please ask them to make their application as early as possible (we already have applications on file for 2008-2009 and beyond).

Eid Mubarak

Clive G. Pierrepont
Director of Development and Admissions