Preparations for the New School Year

In mid-August, all campuses welcomed their influx of new teaching staff, arriving from all over the world. Professional training involved both these and existing teaching staff, covering all aspects of their work at the schools, helping them to get ready for the new semester.

Professional Training

As the school year draws to a close, campuses have initiated various forms of home-and-school communication. The Primary School holds Orientation Sessions for new students, providing parents with comprehensive information about the school, as well as Back-to-School Communication events where parents can connect with homeroom teachers. The Middle School traditionally organises a Back-to-School Night before the start of the school year for parents to meet class teachers. These communication initiatives help to ensure that students are fully prepared for the start of the new school year.

This summer, a new sculpture was added to the Hongqiao Campus -- "the Iron Mountains". This is a gift to students from the founder of the school, Professor Anna Sohmen Pao, who hopes it will deliver the message that "there are mountains beyond the mountains and people beyond the people". It compares life to climbing a mountain, with its ups and downs, requiring perseverance, firm beliefs, and determination. The material of the sculpture echoes that of the facade of the entrance of the teaching building, as a memorial to Mr. YK Pao who "rode the wind and broke the waves" of the shipping business. It symbolises the four famous mountains of China, and also the four famous mountains of the world, to assist Pao School students to meld a broad international vision with the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture.

The Wuding Campus has a newly upgraded outdoor basketball court and playground facilities, to better meet students’ sporting and recreational needs. Songjiang Campus has also renovated its outdoor basketball court, added a new LED screen in the auditorium, overhauled its laboratories, and renewed its ventilation system. It has also undertaken a thorough upgrade of its teachers' residential facilities.

These are only some among many of the actions taken to improve the educational environment for the Pao School’s teachers and students. Others include the renovation of swimming pool hardware and equipment, the concealment of power cables for locker room hair dryers, changes in the design of staircase handrails at the Wuding Campus to improve safety; updating of the water supply system and air conditioning system at the Hongqiao Campus, as well as repair and renovation of roads and pathways; and water testing, along with corridor redecoration, at the Songjiang Campus. All of these steps are designed to enhance campus safety, efficiency, and comfort, to create an optimal all-round educational environment.

The Operation Teams of each campus also took advantage of the holiday period to carry out a deep cleaning of all classrooms, offices, libraries, auditoriums, stadiums and other venues and furniture, washing and drying uniforms, plush toys, floor mats and sports equipment to be used during the semester. There has also been a thorough inspection of all the desks and chairs in the offices and classrooms, and of the facilities in the 200 dorm rooms on the Songjiang Campus, to ensure the safety and comfort of all faculty members and students.

The operations team has also organised training sessions for logistic support, covering process standardisation and safety training for school bus drivers and escorts, security team training on equipment protection and explosion drills, and cleaning team training on advanced disinfection and hygiene, to fully guarantee health and safety on campus.