Education in Malaysia (Part 2)

International Schools

There are a slew of international schools ranging from RM11.4k per year (Tenby, Setia Alam) to over RM60k per year (Mont Kiara International School) for Year 1. We eliminated Mont Kiara International School because of the astronomical fees. Some like Australian International School were eliminated because of location with no convincing reputation.

Garden International School

Our first stop was Garden International School. It’s on the higher end of the scale at RM31k per year but it has been around long enough that we tended to associate international schools with either Garden School or ISKL (International School Kuala Lumpur). GIS’ campus was nice enough and the admissions personnel impressed us enough. There were so many hoops to jump through to get a spot we were almost convinced that we had to have it. We took all the forms noted the deadlines and assessment requirements, and reflected on it. What did we really remember about GIS students when we were students? They certainly new how to have a good time, drinking, smoking and “other things”, but we really didn’t remember anything about them academically. We moved on.

Cempaka

Cempaka has a strong academic reputation. We heard that the Damansara Heights campus had just switched to full international. We were surprised that while they had switched the curriculum and increased the fees, nothing else had changed. The campus had not been upgraded (or even maintained well) and they just retrained their existing teachers. We really didn’t like the campus and although it may be partly psychological we felt like we were being taken for a ride. Basically, switch the syllabus from local to international, keep everything else the same but charge more (much more).

We couldn’t shake the reputation of Cempaka and decided to check out the Cheras campus that has been teaching the international syllabus for a long time. Cempaka is a hybrid of what you’d expect from an academic centric Asian school and a more liberal Western school. The fact that the Year 1 classrooms are arranged in rows facing the teacher rather than a group set up speaks volumes. The students trudge along with vacation size pulley bags. They openly profess that they teach their students ahead of their years and academic performance trumps everything else. The Cheras campus is beautiful but the location (unless you live in Cheras) is horrible. During non-peak hours it took us 30-40 minutes from Mont Kiara. If we did send our kids there we either had to move or be willing to live in the car. There was one thing that stuck with me. I asked them what was the difference between the local curriculum teachers and international curriculum teachers – nothing! The only difference is the subsequent training. I would have expected some difference given the much higher fees.  We liked the campus (not the location), we liked the academic results of the students and the pricing (about RM26k per year). But we decided against it ironically because we didn’t like the extents that the students had to go to achieve those results. We want out kids to have a well-rounded education and we don’t want our Year 1 kid to be taught Year 3 Maths. We also couldn’t get past the daily travel time that our kids would have to endure.

Tenby

Tenby is very popular because it is the cheapest international school. At RM11k per year it is 1/6^th the price of Mont Kiara International School (the most expensive) and even lower than certain private local schools. The immediate concern is how can a school compete for talent at such low rates? The simple answer is that it can’t.

Tenby is rumoured to suffer from a very high teacher turnover leading to poor teacher quality. Tenby is far, not as bad as Cempaka Cheras but still far. The campus was under renovation so it is hard to get an accurate feel for the place but there was a general sense of unruliness. We were touring during the morning break and the kids were just running rampant. In the young students block one of the kids actually ran into me on his tricycle. The admissions staff didn’t impress me. They were evasive about teacher turnover without revealing details. They weren’t willing to share their minimum teacher qualifications and most worrying they weren’t even willing to show us any sample teacher credentials stating that it was confidential! Teacher quality is something we weren’t willing to compromise. Tenby is popular because it is cheap.

International School @ Park City

International School @ Park City is brand new and at RM33k per year it is one of the more expensive. The grounds could have been more expansive but we were generally impressed with the facilities. The thing that we really liked was the calibre of teachers and the headmaster having recently read about the Green School, Bali. Unlike the “other” school the background and qualifications of all the teachers were publically displayed. In a way we also liked it coz it was a fresh start and as pioneer parents we could play a part in shaping the school.