The Outstanding Cambridge Learner Awards Ceremony was held in SCIE on October 26th, 2019.
This year, SCIE students achieved excellent results in CIE examinations as always. In total, 40 students won the Outstanding Cambridge Learner Awards: 20 of them got Top in the World awards, 19 of them got Top in China, and 1 student got Best Across award. It is noticeable that more than 20% of recipients of the award ceremony are from SCIE, solidifying our leading position in all international schools across China with this significantly higher percentage.
From 1 p.m. in the afternoon, invited guests gradually arrived at SCIE and signed in with the help of student volunteers. Signature boards and other props were provided in the campus for students and their parents to take photos with. After the welcoming “warm-ups”, guests were led to the auditorium where refreshments and drinks were prepared for them by staff. As people ate and chatted, the relaxing atmosphere calmed everyone down.
Before the ceremony started, students from SCIE performed a Piano-Saxophone duet and a famous Chinese traditional piece with Erhu. The melodious tunes cheered up the atmosphere even more but maintained the formality and elegance of the ceremony. The host also introduced the new WeChat Live function this year, where all guests can obtain the official pictures and short videos taken, making the awarding process easier and more efficient.
At 2:30 p.m., the ceremony officially began. Our principal Mr. Neil Mobsby gave an award presentation speech, congratulating all students for their achievements and awards in a range of different subjects.
Following him, Tim Oates, CEO from Cambridge International Assessment Education, shared his speech. He stated that it was not only an extraordinary moment for award-winning candidates, their parents, their teachers, and the school, but also a special time for Cambridge International Assessment Education, because the focus of their work is to help and support the next generation to develop as global citizens. Since its establishment, CIAE has always been providing students with diversified education services, and now students’ achievements can demonstrate the success of Cambridge Education system.
Next, the awards were announced, and students went on the stage in the following order:
-High Achievement
-Top in Country
-Best Across
-Top in the World
High Achievement awards were handed out to learners who have achieved the highest standard marks in the country in a less widely taken subject, encouraging their interests with acknowledgement just like the more popular subjects. It is a pity that graduated students could not attend the ceremony, but their parents accepted the awards on behalf of their children instead.
After distributing the High Achievement awards, Travis from SCIE shared his learning experience as a Student Representative. He achieved the highest standard mark in China for AS Level Spanish, having studied Spanish for the past three years in SCIE. He encouraged every student to challenge themselves with foreign language subjects, no matter how difficult it might seem.
Later, it was the turn for Top in China awards. These were awarded to learners who have achieved the highest standard marks in the country for any individual subject.
Next, the Best Across awards were given to learners who have achieved the highest cumulative total standard marks in the country. Annie Tang from SCIE had overall highest standard marks for all four AS Level subjects and won the Best Across AS Level award.
After that, another Student Representative, Alexander James Cox from Guangzhou, shared his inner thoughts on CAIE result releasing day and his opinions about academics. He received the Top in China award for IGCSE German this year.
Finally, the Top in the World awards were given to learners who have achieved the highest standard marks in the world for any individual subject. In the last academic year, three students from SCIE achieved 100% (full score) in Further Mathematics, which is widely recognized as the most difficult subject in A Level.
“Cambridge 10 Years School” awards were also given to congratulate and acknowledge the schools who have joined CAIE for 10 years and have worked together towards further recognition of the Cambridge International system across the world.
In addition, the CEO of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award, Garrison Lu, was also invited to this ceremony to give out IA Silver Awards. The Award encourages young pupils to spend time volunteering in their communities, which both benefits others and contributes to their own growth. Besides this, students are also required to complete different durations of hiking expeditions in May each year depending on the level of the award.
Student representative, David from SCIE, shared his experience participating in the Duke of Edinburgh’s award for three years, and emphasized the importance of outdoor activities as an indispensable part of student life.
Time flies, and soon the ceremony came to an end. All students, parents, teachers, and guests were invited to take a group photo together on ground floor. More cameras continued to flash as everyone took more individual photos to record this commemorative day. Overwhelmed with pride and joy, their smiles on their face could not be hidden anymore.
All in all, sincere congratulations to all award-winning students, and good luck to this year’s SCIE students as we approach the 2020 examinations!
My essay is on the recent development of China’s mental health care system and how it can help address this question. Though, I actually parried the question raised by the prompt, and I did not in the end emphasise too much that more care should be devoted to the socially vulnerable. Rather, I intended to underscore the complexity and ambiguity in any employment of these two notions — “socially vulnerable” and “responsibility” — in the concrete working of society. Through my study I discovered that the train of legislative efforts made in the 1980s to 2000s to legally recognise, to enhance public knowledge of, and to erect new asylums for, “the mentally ill,” in fact coincided spatiotemporally with government efforts in putting new agendas of foreign policies and city development to work. Thus, the recent development of China’s mental health care, from scratch to full maturity, is not solely the consequence of “humanitarian effort,” but also of some other ulterior motives. In my conclusion, I hinted that any answer to this question would entail empirical investigation into the concrete working of social institutions, and depending on the nature of this “socially vulnerable” group, claims of “responsibility” may be leveraged as veils for other purposes.
Before starting my research I did not by then have a well-formed hypothesis, but I did have Michel Foucault’s intriguing study on madness in mind. Due to the rather peculiar nature of the object of my study, I was not able to apply the sociological theories (Marxism, Functionalism, e.g.) I learnt in class to my own research. I must thank my sociology teacher for his encouragement and provision of many textbook resources and classical studies done in the field of mental health care. In addition to that, he prepared a statement of the school for my application to conduct short interviews at a local mental health hospital — this application, however, though quite expectedly, sank into oblivion — without his help this project would be very difficult.
I made a documentary “The Definition” about the situation of elderly in Shenzhen to enter this competition. As I have some previous knowledge in filmmaking, learning from TBU studio, I though it would be meaningful if I combined my filmmaking skills with sociology knowledge. In the meanwhile, after learning the very first chapter of sociology, The Family, I found out that the situation of elderly in the UK is different from that of elderly in Shenzhen. For instance, elderly have the responsibility taking care of their grandchildren and dance in the park for entertainment is distinctive in China. Therefore, I decided to make a documentary to record the interesting culture.
I learnt a lot during the preparation for the competition. I learned a lot about how to carry out an individual primary research when I was filming “The Definition”, which helps a lot in my current sociology study. Also, I understood sociology theories better. For instance, postmodernism used to be only a vague theoretical perspective for me, yet it amazed me knowing that elderly people participate actively in public activities can be considered as view of postmodernism.
Most importantly, I realized filmmaking can make some impacts on people, portraying problems of society. Experience of BSA opened my eyes and led me rethink about my future major in college. I want use my skills and knowledge to help more people, so I will probably try a major with humanity and filmmaking combined instead of pursuing the dream of being an artist alone.
Learning sociology gives me a new perspective in seeing how the world works, and it also lets me care more about the vulnerability in the society. Thank you to my sociology teacher, Richard Driscoll, who gave me lots of inspiration such as filming the dancing in the park, which is interesting to British people, and recommenced lots of sociological books about the elderly.
By listening to his advice, “The Definition” eventually divides into two parts: one is about the elderly in nursing home and the other is about people dancing in the park. Also, there is many interviews in the documentary to give a more well-rounded perspective.
I would like to thank my Math teacher Michael Jin and my friend Franchaska, who helped me with the voice over. Also, thanks to my family members, especially my dear grandmother, who gave me lots of insights related to the issue of elderly.
I made this documentary just before the deadline, thus it’s not so perfect. I’ll probably elaborate some shots and reedit it in the future.
If you are interested, you can click the link below and watch it.
Teng Xun Video:https://v.qq.com/x/page/u0862usad2v.html
Bilibili:https://www.bilibili.com/video/av38188271?from=search&seid=10452775157822232568