Nord Anglia - anyone send their kids to one of their schools?

[expatmover]

Hello!

I tried posting about Kuala Lumpur schools on the Living Oversea board with no luck...

Anyone on here send their child to a Nord Anglia school?

One of the schools we are looking at in KL is the British International school which is part of the Nord Anglia group.

Would love to know what you think of the group, their ethos etc. and were/are your children happy there?

Anybody...?

My only experience with them is in Dublin, where I was looking at it for my eldest - but they couldn't get their act together to actually first reply to my emails, then arrange a zoom (or tour), or then turn up to one that was arranged....

So I dumped them, and went elsewhere. Anecdotally, I know another friend of a friend's family sent their child there and removed them a year later (and not because they'd moved).

The campus (from the web) looks lovely, and they do have all the facilities, and this is a very new Nord Anglia school, and it was the tail end of covid, so perhaps my experiences aren't representative though.

Not very helpful, sorry.

I had my kids in an (atypical) Nord Anglia school. It was taken over by NA, though, so we only had a relationship with them for a year. I'd say the local school management is more important than the overarching NA brand. You DO get cool add-ons from being an NA school - links with universities, links with other schools, NA-wide competitions etc. NA also invested in infrastructure - new seating, new playground equipment etc.

For our school a bit of NA oversight was a good thing, but it did make life more stressful for the teachers e.g. NA have strict rules about term-time time off. For teachers working internationally, that can make life harder. Sometimes you need to look at a new rental, or see a dentist, and when you're operating in a new/overseas environment it can be particularly difficult to manage that stuff without taking a few hours off in term-time.

I had a friend who had her kids in an NA school in the US and loved it. Try the KL FB groups. You might find an opinion there.

Thanks both! Helpful to hear honest opinions.

The NA BIS school in KL looks very new and big - fantastic facilities etc., and I think links with global NA network could be useful, but we are not 100% sold on the school yet compared to others we are looking at.

Hi, former teacher at a Nord Anglia school. The international connections are incredible, the camp in Tanzania is amazing. The teachers are of a very high quality BUT it is ultimately a for profit organisation, if your children are academic they will do very well. If they are not, they will still take your money and there is not much support. For example, I know of a case where a student failed their GCSE English (pretty hard to do) and yet they were accepted to the IB for Sixth Form. There is no way that child would pass the IB but they took them anyway.

I worked in one once, it was okay but if it's KL you're off to there are much better options (garden, Alice smith)

GIS and Alice Smith are our two other options. We have friends whose DC are at GIS and v happy there. But also have a friend who went to AS (many many years ago) and said it was the "preeminent" British school in KL.

Culturally, what's the difference between GIS and AS?

This is super helpful thank you! DC1 is v bright but DC2 not so much.

My Dd went to nord anglia in Dubai. And also Alice Smith in KL. We loved Alice Smith and they were excellent at supporting my DS who has dyslexia through his GCSE’s. We were sad to leave but didn’t miss the journey to the school!
My Dd ended up doing her GCSE’s in Dubai at Nord Anglia. She enjoyed the school and did very well but we weren’t as impressed. It was a new school and things were very chaotic. They pride themselves on languages but it was only the employing of a tutor which got my DD through French GCSE and it was a definite no for Post GCSE as they did IB but even if they had done A levels I think we would probably have left.
I did have a friend who sent her daughter to BIS in KL and was very happy with it so I wouldn’t discount it . I guess it is where you can see your DC being happiest and ultimately my DD was happy at Nord and French. aside did very well in her GCSE’s so they must have been doing some things well.

Thank you so much for this. What was Alice Smith like as a community? What were the parents like? Was it mainly British children or mix?

@expatmover Parents were mainly British. Really great community for primary less so at secondary due to distance from school but parents organised regular meet-ups,whatsapp groups. My children loved it there and were well supported. As it is quite an old established school many of the teachers were long timers so gave the school some stability. My only proviso is we left 6 years ago (to go to Dubai) so my experience may be out of date

Mine went a number of years back. As with a PP, we had a relationship with the school before NA took over. It was better before! The long-standing staff members were great, but NA pushed them out over time. It wasn’t nice to see. Admin was appalling, so disorganized with fees and invoicing and so on. Different procedures each year over when class groups were announced. There were some shining stars amongst the staff when we left but they have all, bar one, moved on. Staff tended to stick it out for a year or two and then move on, so little stability or consistency. If there are other options, I’d likely take them over NA!