Welcome to the new academic year!

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all back for the 2021-22 academic year or, indeed, to welcome you to the Wellington Family if you are new to the school this year. My family and I arrived in Shanghai a month ago now and we are thoroughly enjoying the sights, sounds and people. It has been especially rewarding for me to finally spend some time in the school after our quarantine.  

As you can imagine, we are all incredibly excited to have our pupils back in the building, and to welcome our new Wellingtonians to the corridors, classrooms and sports fields. I appreciate that the ongoing travel restrictions may have left you all feeling a little less enthusiastic than normal to get back to the school routine, but we are grateful as a community for the sacrifices that you have made to keep your families safe during the holiday period. In truth, we are beginning the year with plenty of momentum. The IGSCE and IB exam results were recently released, and once again, our Senior School pupils have achieved truly impressive results. I look forward to seeing what our current pupils as well as our Old Wellingtonians will accomplish in the coming year.

Looking ahead, we have an exciting enrichment programme that will challenge our pupils to broaden their interests and skills that goes in-hand with reigniting the Wellingtonian competitive spirit as we look to getting our sporting events up and running once again. Moreover, a full range of academic as well as parent-led activities are already in the works, such as our annual Science Week and upcoming Parents and Teachers Mixers. As a remarkable testament to the abilities and competencies of our pupils, 2021 also marks the inaugural year of our new dual-language programme, an ambitious project which looks to create fully bilingual, biliterate and bicultural pupils through immersion in a dual Chinese/English learning environment.

You will see that the campus has enjoyed some major upgrades during the holidays, including the installation of our floodlights, which you cannot miss. I am also confident that our year 12 and 13 pupils are going to make full use of our new Sixth Form Centre and IB suite. Completed last spring, this brand-new space in building 5 is purpose-built to support them as they study for the IB Diploma. But we do hope that the most important thing our pupils will notice when they return to school is how pleased all our staff are to have them back. We know how much it means to all of them to see their friends again as well.

Finally, I encourage all of our parents to get involved in the Wellington Community this year, be it at home with your children, at one of our main school events or as contributors to our Friends of Wellington parent team.

I look forward to meeting all of your children and many of you over the coming term.

Brendon Fulton

Master