New Sathorn International School

[krummi]

Any opinions about whether NSIS can be recommended?

[FunFon]

Depends on the relative importance to you of the following factors:

Easy transportation, close to home.

Relatively low cost.

Agreement with their particular flavour and intensity of Christianity with your own.

Number of fellow students that are native English speakers in the classroom

Degree of quality regarding academic excellence.

To the extent that those higher on the list are relatively important to you compared to those lower, then I'd give a qualified OK, but do get to know the individual teachers involved with your kid and regularly monitor/supplement their work.

To the extent the last item is of high importance to you and you're willing for the education to be more secularly impartial, then IMO the following are much better if you can afford them, in order of geographic convenience to that location:

Shrewsbury

NIST

Patana

Harrow

ISB

[Spaniel]

I'm not famliar with NSIS so can't offer an opinion. On the other hand our son attended Ruamrudee International School for 13 years and graduated in 2008. Based on my past relationship with RIS I can highly recommend this school. Google them for more info.

[fletchsmile]

Our kids went there from pre-nursery to K3. (2 1/2 to 5/6), as it was close to where we live, international and reasonably priced. We were quite happy with it.

It's actually located on the old Harrow school grounds. Funnily enough when there were floods in 2011, some of the Harrow pupils/teachers came back to use some of the facilities as the new school had to be closed due to floods.

On the admin side things were transparent with reasonable application and joining fees, discount for 2nd and 3rd child. When we were thinking of moving countries we just talked to them and arranged to pay half a term at a time as timing was uncertain, and they just gave us a pro rata rate. Walter running the admin side is a friendly helpful guy who arranged that sort of thing and you could talk to about anything quite easily.

They also run a summer school for 4 weeks around June, which was convenient, as otherwise we thought the holiday was too long.

Didn't notice a great impact about religion. Christian values I guess, but not pushy with it as far as I saw.

Things that could have been improved:

- I think they lack a headmaster to run the school. It's run more by administrators. This means you also should check out the teachers you will have each year.

- There seemed quite a turnover of staff, although we always got good teachers, again you needed to check out who you're getting

- There's not much parental involvement.

- Probably a bit higher % of local Thais than I'd prefer for a more international flavour

We've moved countries for the moment and notice a difference in these things at the current school which are better. There's things like coffee mornings, parent outings etc which gives a more family feel, and nicer for my the wife as she could get more involved. It feels more international, with fewer locals, so feels more diverse, with more western kids to balance things. The average age of the teachers here is higher too, giving less of a feel they're just passing thru. Then again the fees are much higher too

All in all we were reasonably happy with it. If we hadn't have moved we'd have continued sending them there at that age, but maybe reappraised at secondary school.

The other two schools in Sathorn were:

- St.Andrews: smaller grounds, and would probably have been a nightmare for travelling for us as it was in the centre of Sathorn where traffic would have been bad. NSIS was easy to drive to for the Mrs.

- Garden Internal School. Some nice gardens, but your kids don't get their education in the garden, and we felt the indoor facilities and general feel wasn't as good

We'll probably send them back there for summer school this year, as the country we're in at the moment doesn't have one at their school, and otherwise 8-9 weeks is too long holiday.

Summer school would start mid-June I think so you could always use that as a chance to check out. The hours are shorter and it's less academic orientated, but would give a flavour. Also keep the kids occupied

Cheers

Fletch