3 February

Good morning! Wishing everyone a happy and healthy Year of Snake 🐍!

For this Week

Monday: All-Staff Conference

Tuesday: Staff Lunch Meeting; K1 Admissions AM only

Wednesday: Student Support Advisor Cathy McSweeny visits

Friday: K2-Y1 Enhanced Transition Meetings 

>>Next week: K1 PTCs, K2 Bowen Road Trip, K1 Therapy Dog Incursion


All-Staff Conference Reminder

📍Venue: Grand Hall, Level 3, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC), 1 Expo Drive, Wan Chai

🕗 Timings

  • 8am Join us for coffee, pastries, and music from our student band

  • 8.30am Conference starts

  • 12pm Lunch break (75 minutes)

  • 1.15pm Conference resumes

  • 3.15pm Expected finish


🔖 No Badge, No Entry: Conference badges have been sent to schools and will be distributed to everyone ahead of the event. Write your name and school/centre on your badge and wear it on arrival and throughout the day. For security and safeguarding, only staff wearing their badge will be allowed entry.


🚆 How to Get There

  • Walk from MTR station Exhibition Centre (Exit B3) or Wan Chai (Exit A5).

  • Allow at least 10 minutes to walk from the MTR to the venue.

  • Visit our conference website for detailed travel information.

📌 Find Your Seat: Each school or centre has a designated seating area. View the seating plan here in advance so you know where to go on arrival.


Sports Fun Day

IRC will allow us to use teh ground from 9am-3pm. They’ve increased the price on us, so it’ll be a tight schedule. We will run two separate sessions, 9:15-11:00am for the morning and 1:00-2:45pm for the afternoon classes. We want to allow a 2-hour lunch gap (give or take) so colleagues can have a non-rushed lunch break out in the Causeway Bay area.


Let's go over our plans on Tuesday. You’re welcome to plan ahead and update the spreadsheet for station ideas and equipment needed.


The ESF sports coaches will be joining the K1 rotations as arranged by one of our K1 parents who works with Explore. This means the K1s will have one extra station which will keep the pace going, and the K2s can also have slightly longer at each station based on last year’s feedback. 


Here’s an updated map for the day. We will have to try it out in the morning and make changes if one station needs more space. Sports Day Map Please arrive at 9am sharp to set up. The IRC said we could only enter via the main entrance. They cannot open the gates near the HK Stadium. Let's collect all the equipment in amah bags, and the admin team will arrange to deliver it to the club. 


Community Play

During our Tuesday meeting, we also want to revisit our Community Play time agreements. 


Phishing Emails 

The results of our recent ESF phishing email exercise indicate that we still have work to do. In our latest phishing email exercise, ESF observed a click rate of 10.9%, and data submission was at 4.5% (ESF-wide figures). These figures suggest that a number of us are still falling victim to these deceptive tactics.

As we continue to enhance our security measures, please remember that we will be required to update our passwords regularly. However, always remain vigilant—be cautious of any emails requesting sensitive information or prompting you to click on links, as they may be phishing attempts.

If you have any questions or need further guidance on recognising phishing emails, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Upcoming Dates
Please check our internal calendar below. We might forget to remind everyone of odd dates. We will continue to add events as soon as they're confirmed. Here's the full 2024/25 Calendar and DRAFT 2025/26 Calendar.

Thank you!