We’ve started our fiftieth anniversary year with the biggest snowfall in Madrid for 50 years! 50cm of snow to clear. There seems to be a pattern! Thanks to our fantastic maintenance, cleaning and management teams and our neighbours in Rosa Jardón for helping to clear pathways in and around the school so that we can welcome pupils back in person as soon as possible.

Just because we couldn’t go to the theatre this year, we weren’t stopped from performing our spectacular Christmas shows – one of our favourite moments in the festive calendar. Many thanks to the children for learning their lines and for their fabulous acting and singing, to the parents for providing the terrific costumes, and to the teachers for the wonderful backdrops and props and for directing the shows and editing the videos that were sent to parents. Congratulations!

It’s important to us at ISM that students feel connected to their local community and to the wider world. Therefore, through the co-ordinated efforts of the Student Council, the APA’s Solidarity Commission and the pupils and their families, we have once again been able to support a number of good causes during this first term.

Secondary pupils have held various fundraising events to raise 1778 € for the the ‘Fundación Menudos Corazones’ an organisation that helps families of children with congenital heart disease. Students in Years 9 – 13 also participated in an online session to learn about of the history of Menudos Corazones and to gain an awareness of what life is like for a child with congenital heart disease.

At the end of November the whole school participated in ‘Operation Kilo’, collecting over 600 kilos of food destined for three organisations. In Primary, 300 kilos of food were delivered to our local branch of Caritas in the parish of Santa María Magdalena to help the hungry in our local area.

In the Middle School 140 kilos of food was donated to the foundation olVIDAdos who are providing emergency food relief across the community of Madrid. Pupils in Years 7 – 8 also too part in a virtual meeting with one of the its founders where they learned about the domestic and international projects that the association is involved in and the emergency assistance they provide to refugees.

In Secondary 160 kilos of food is destined for Malawi. Students have also heard from Manuel Hernández, a missionary from Malawi, who spoke about his first hand experience of the projects in which ISM has assisted, including the St Mary primary school in Benga.

Thanks so much to the pupils and their families for making all of this possible.

The theme of this year’s Art Contest was ‘Fictional Worlds’. Once again, we were inundated with entries from pupils in Nursery to Year 6. The winning entries are now displayed on the main staircase and the winning artists will receive their certificates and prizes later in the week. Thanks and congratulations to all who participated!

Whilst remote learning demonstrated the tremendous resilience, ingenuity and creativity of pupils and teachers, nothing beats face-to-face teaching. Therefore, we’re delighted to be back. The school is open, allowing all students to attend in person five days a week. Safety procedures are in place (including sanitizing points, social distancing, mask wearing, temperature checks, etc.) and our attendance rate, at 96%, is excellent. We’ve been delighted to welcome almost a hundred new students to the ISM family this term, all the way across the whole school, and hope that every one of our pupils continues to enjoy their learning journey. It really is great to back!

It’s been a long held tradition at ISM to dress up for Hallowe’en and to take part in spooky themed classes and activities, and this year was no different!

Congratulations to all of our 2020 A-Level and IGCSE students. Despite the global lockdown leading to one of the most unusual and challenging exam seasons of modern times, our pupils excelled themselves, with one half of entries receiving the top A*/A grades and three-quarters receiving A*, A or B grades. As always, this means our students have been able to enter top universities in the UK, Spain and around the world. We are delighted for them.

Despite the lockdown, we were delighted to celebrate World Book Day at ISM with a dressing up competition judged by writers and storytellers from the UK, teachers sharing their favourite stories, older students reading to the younger ones, along with a whole host of other book related activities. We love reading!

Whilst the outbreak of Covid-19 has led to the authorities closing the doors to the schools, learning continues. It’s the first time we’ve ever had to shut the school and we can’t wait to see all of students, in person, again soon. But, in the meantime, remote teaching continues via Google Classroom and Google Meet, meaning that students can keep up with their studies and can keep interacting with their teachers and friends throughout the normal school hours.

Having once again achieved more awards than any other of the 130 Cambridge examination centres in Spain, Mr Wickham was delighted to be the only head teacher awarded not one, but two special plaques in recognition of our students’ achievement. These plaques, for our ten Outstanding Cambridge Learner awards, were presented at this year’s NABSS conference by Nick Mazur from Cambridge Assessment International.