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by Two Ton Tony » Mon, 17 Jun 2013 2:14 am
Realising this is an old thread but recognising others with similar questions may come along here's my comparison based on :
GESS - 1 in KK and 1 in Not-De stream. 2009-2011
SSiS - 2 in Not-Very-DE stream 2011-present day
GESS is a big beast school with 1,500 pupils in two locations (one is changing). The school has two streams (basically DE-IB and Learning-DE-IB). It's got a good reputation but poor results in Singapore and doesn't have a lot of staff that stick around for long. The two location strategy is painful and we never really felt satisfied with the education standards to be honest. Ultimately we pulled our kids out of GESS for a variety of reasons but it was probably lots of little reasons, price hikes with no justification, lousy lousy admin, unsatisfactory interaction, promises made and denied (which I thought was just a Swiss thing!).
SSiS was a snap decision of ours at the end of one term of being screwed about. It is a smaller campus of around 400, cheaper by some 25% and better than GESS by some way, though like GESS, makes lousy admin decisions based entirely around your being a single working parent family. Ideally with 1 child and non working wife of course. This is of course Swiss norm and so I forgive them their country ways. The curriculum is Swiss and the school only takes the kids up to about age 11 at which point they are auto enrolled into UWC (look it up under "The school that God made" or "the school that God wished he'd made" - it has something of a reputation... Ask me in 2016).
In closing, I know several families that have moved their kids to SSiS from GESS and only one that moved the other way. But everyone has their own reasons and you should do your own research and not listen to idle gossip.