British Curriculum Primary Schools - conflicting reports

[hkchick]

Hi - We have 2 kids going into P3 and K2. Have looked at other threads and also phoned around the schools. Have seen conflicting views on Chatsworth International School - Orchard Road ? Can anyone give me an unbiased view of this school. Any other recommendations would be greatly appreciated to narrow our search down. My husband will be working in District 2 so we want to live relatively near or middle between school and his work. However schooling is more important so he will travel if need be. Please help this is very stressful

[sundaymorningstaple]

I though any "view" would be biased as it is based on an individual's POV!

Guess you could just go to their website. There view wouldn't be any more biased I reckon.

[missis]

I didn't think it followed the British curriculum...? Follows PYP, taken from IB. It is explained on their website.

[tazz]

whatever you do, don't try St Josephs. They have become very arrogant and rude. Just because they have a waitlist now. Why can't the people who work at these schools be friendly and helpful? Turned us off so much.

[cbavasi]

We could not be more pleased with St. Josephs... it is a small school (only 3 classes per grade in the elementary) with no plans to expand the numbers. It's unfortunate that you received an arrogance from the front office... again, it is a small staff that knows each and every child by name and truly cares about the children and their education. We couldn't be happier with our choice for our children's education here in Singapore.

[KindClare]

We just secured places at Chatsworth Orchard this week. My kids are the exact same ages as yours and are also coming from a British curriculum.

When we visited Chatsworth, we found the curriculum to be very similar to the Foundation Phase curriculum at their school in the UK. The building is older (it is a listed building, if I remember correctly) but the location is good, the facilities seemed nice, certainly nicer/better than their UK school!

We also considered Dover Court Prep which is NOT an IB school, but follows a British curriculum. We were impressed there also, they are a bit smaller (2 classes per year group) but had very nice facilities as well. For us, Chatsworth had the edge based on central location. (Dover is in the west).

We didn't consider any schools that had a waitlist as we only plan to be in Singapore for max of 2 years.

[BigSis]

I've got a child in secondary at Chatsworth Orchard, but I can't comment on the primary as she was at a different school for primary.

The school is OK - nothing fancy as I'm sure you've seen. It used to be the Chinese Girls School before that moved out to a bigger site. It has plenty of character but obviously not as smart and trendy looking as some of the newer schools. If you've got a very sporty child it might not be the school for you as they don't have an awful lot of space, but my child is not sporty at all so it suits her fine.

Although the curriculum follows the IB, what they do at school isn't an awful lot different to what I did in a UK state school when I was younger, so I don't have any worries about her fitting back into school in the UK if the time comes. The primary school here that she was previously attending also followed the IB and that didn't seem too much different to when I was at school either. I suppose there's only so much changing about a school can do with basic subjects such as Maths and English!

[carolynW]

I also got a "rudish" response from St Josephs, they said we have 30 in the waiting list... so I said do you mean I can't see the school? are you trying to discourage me from coming? I thought its a strange response from a recruitment person?

[scarbowl]

You might try Stamford American which, despite their name, uses the International Primary Curriculum which is British-based and used predominately in British schools. They are also working towards accreditation for IB - according to their website.