That is why we moved out from Stamford American International School

[alioshalxx]

For the families who are looking for International Schools in Singapore. Here is the story why we would not recommend Stamford American International School. It shows how the school is run by the parent company Cognita Schools Group for profit not for education.

We moved to Singapore around May 2016, and we spent three months before that to find the school for our daughters, who were 3.5 and 5 years old back then. We intentionally selected couple schools where we could put both of them in the same campus because not all of the schools would accept a 3.5 years old. SAIS is one of those where we could put them together, and we made the decision after visiting it twice. The admission office is fully aware of our criteria, and they had never mentioned during our visit that they would have two campus planned in a year later. Then after two weeks of the first semester, in August 2016, they announced that they would have an early learning village built and all the students from nursery to KG2 would need to move to the new campus from August 2017. When we checked with the superintendent and the admission, they said that they did not know about it before the announcement (I have emails communication to prove). --- How could you believe it?
You might be saying it could be, as the organization has dedicated group to manage the profitability, so that the faculty could focus on the education.....So here is another prove:
http://www.littlestepsasia.com/singapor ... ars-centre
https://www.cognita.com/cognita-plans-s ... singapore/

Referring to the above links, there were multiple promotional material from different website on line, I have to admit the Cognita group is good at marketing. The Australian International Schoool in Singapore, ran by Gognita, announced an early years center in the middle of 2015 and had the ground breaking in Sept. 2015 launching in Jan. 2017 (then had to be delayed to Aug. 2017). The Stamford early learning villege is located right next to this early year center, but yet, they announced it in August 2016. It is obvious that they would have known about the development way ealier. The only valid reason that I could think of, in my opinion, is the land was planned to build an early years center only for the AIS, but they could not attract enough family to put their kids in it, so they then in 2016 made the decision to split the campus into two, one would be ran by AIS, and another one by SAIS, as they could fill up the space with existing students in the Woodleigh campus, and they had a good year of enrolling more students than they could for older age. In fact, the AIS early year center and the SAIS early learning villege are sharing the facility between two buildings. There is a share platform on level 3 between two buildings, they just simply put a fence to separate the AIS students and SAIS students. You could also tell that the two building were build identical structurally except different branding.
Then they started to promote in 2017, that it was planned to be together, they said from the below artical "If we had set up schools separately we wouldn’t have been able to have such an amazing facility that we can both share,” said Mr Michael Day, Stamford American’s early years’ principal."
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/si ... en-9169350

Another prove is that, referring to the below link in Straits Time back in 2015:
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ ... s-facility, they said it is an SGD 200 MM investment for AIS,
Then they had an media communication in Straits Times again in 2017 saying that the investment for AIS and SAIS early years center in total was SGD 200MM
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ ... e-the-fees

So you could tell how they contradicting themselves in the articles before and after. If they had planned for it, then why they did not announce it at the same time when they announced the AIS early learning center back in mid 2015?

Based on this, you could tell how the commercial operation is dictating the education in the organization. Families were furious when they made the announcement, as they had withheld the information for so long without communication and force the family to accept it. They could have announced couple months earlier, so that the families could find another school, announcing in August makes the families could not put their kids to other shcool until a year later (school year for most of the International School in Singapore is from August to June next year) They also refused to refund the facility fee which is about SGD 7K, and the registration fee SGD 3.5K, even if the families wanted to pull out after the announcement. How could this be reasonable? Would you still be considering this school after reading this?

[sundaymorningstaple]

Guess you all should have listened to PNGMK. He's been downing 'for profit' schools for years on here.

[PNGMK]

Absolutely. Look at that campus. They need to squeeze every penny they can out of the parents and try to spend as little on kids as they can.

[arjumallika]

So what schools do you recommend . Have been in Singapore only for few months and despite that have already been burned by expensive schools which only has bells and whistles and no content . My daughter is only 4. But in a year I would need to choose a long term school for her . And I am so done with these pompous schools sending notes home ONLY for money . And meets once a year to say your kid isn't really doing well.

Absolutely. Look at that campus. They need to squeeze every penny they can out of the parents and try to spend as little on kids as they can.

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[PNGMK]

SAS, Tanglin, UWC and ICS are mission or trust type schools. Nexus also apparently.

Definitely not AIS, CIS, Cheatsford or Overseas Fautly School. Also SIS is apparently a profit based school.

[arjumallika]

SAS, Tanglin, UWC and ICS are mission or trust type schools. Nexus also apparently.

Definitely not AIS, CIS, Cheatsford or Overseas Fautly School. Also SIS is apparently a profit based school.

What about OWIS


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[PNGMK]

I don't know it. Ask them who owns them. If they prevaricate and say um um um well there is your answer.

[PNGMK]

Bumping this up. It seems SAIS or PAL are deleting negative posts about SAIS. Perhaps best just not to discuss it.