St Andrews International School - Sukhumvit 107

[Rags]

We are moving to Bangkok over the summer and have 2 children that are currently in Yr3 and Yr9.  I would greatly appreciate any parent's or teacher's views or first-hand experience of St Andrews International School at Sukhumvit 107.  Whilst we are obviously interested to hear about both the primary and the secondary schools, we are particularly keen to know more about the quality of the secondary programme for our eldest as he will be starting his important final couple of years for GCSEs.

 

I have tried to search through the forum for existing posts on the subject, but I keep getting side-tracked with comments related to all the 'other' St Andrews schools in Bangkok...!!! 

[Rags]

Obviously not too many parents or teachers from the school currently active on ThaiVisa - any comments or recommendations from others in the group?

[Big Guns]

St Andrew's gets good results at IB and IGCSE. The schools are inspected by CFBT (an independent UK group that inspects British International schools every 3 years and two of the schools in the group were awarded the highest grade of Gold standard. The teacher's tend to be mainly from  the UK and they generally stay for a few years. It's a good school reasonably priced, well equipped and it has small class sizes.

[Rags]

Thanks Big Guns - sounds encouraging.  I will check out the CFBT ratings that you mention.

 

I like the idea of the small class size, but I have just received their list of Yr10 option subjects and note that there is not a great selection - presumably due to the smaller size of the school and number of teachers.

[rwdrwdrwd]

Edit, ignore. Noticed you're aware of the prevalence of St Andrews schools :D. 71 is the best one though.

[Rags]

Thanks guys - so no horror stories regarding St Andrews 107, which hopefully means it is a reasonable school.  However from reading other reviews, the general consensus appears to be that St Andrews 71 is a better option for a school at that that end of town, especially considering Bangkok Patana does not have places for Yr10.

[strangefish32]

Both have very similar IGCSE results - about 80% A*-C for S71 and 82% for S107. S71 is on its way to becoming another Bangkok factory school with multiple form entry and classes of about 24+. Roll is currently over 1000. Good if you want your child to be one of many. S107 is about 490 kids with smaller class sizes, especially at IGCSE and IB. IB is more established at S71 but S107 had a 100% Diploma pass rate last year, well over the WW average of 78%, despite not being as selective as S71. Fees at both schools are not cheap. S71 jacked its fees by nearly 10% this year (probably to pay for the new building) while S107's rose by about 5%. It all depends on what kind of school suits your kids - S71 is sticking with the UK National Curriculum for KS1-3 and S107 is now a candidate school for the IB's PYP. They're similar schools but different at the same time.

[Rags]

Thanks Strangefish32 - Some really useful background info. 

 

Despite our original interest in S107 (located close to our house) we are actually now leaning towards S71, as they offer a much wider range of IGCSE options for Y10.  I appreciate what you are saying about the size of the school but guess that is what enables them to offer the larger selection of Y10 subjects.  Definitely some food for thought.

 

Out of interest, do you have any recommendations for other schools for us to check out?

[strangefish32]

NIST is a very good school that does IB throughout. IGCSEs are losing importance these days as the GCSE has been tampered with and devalued by UK government interference, and they mean little to anyone outside the UK and the British expat bubble. IB is the future and the PYP and DP are very good programmes (I'd almost go as far as saying DP is preferred by many universities). The MYP (middle years bit) has had issues but it looks like they are being sorted out. Have a look at KIS as well.

[Skytrain2hell]

A bit of an old thread, but STA 71 isn't related to the other Saint Andrews schools, and STA71 is a much better school. NIST is full IB. Though I agree that the IB is way better, it's not what the OP was asking about.

[BobbyL]

St A on 71 is ran by Nord Anglia and is generally known to be far better than the other ST A's ran by Cognita. 

[OldSiamHand]

You're probably already familiar with the post on international schools at the top of this subject.  

 

 

Looking at the various schools a couple of years ago, I would confirm most of the observations in that post.  In your research you'll find that it appears a new international school pops up every few weeks.  It seems like you are spoiled for choice, but in my opinion you really aren't.  In my case the two main concerns involved finding a school (i) run as a foundation and not as a for-profit (I believe the majority of schools are for-profit) and (ii) an international student body not dominated by Thai students (I believe the majority of schools have Thais constituting a large minority if not majority of the student body).  For us it came down to NIST, ISB and Patana and we opted for Patana.