Stamford American International School

[singapore2013]

Does SAIS have an admissions office with full time admissions staff? I can't seem to find any information on the website other than the general email address.

I know this topic has been discussed to death but I haven't been able to find any recent information about the school (post move to its new campus). Is there a lot of teacher turnover? I'm interested primarily in the lower elementary grades. Are the teachers relatively young and inexperienced?

What is the reading level for Grade 1, for example? How does the school handle differences in reading, math, etc? Do they basically cater to the lowest common denominator?

And how many Grade 1 classes are there?

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts.

[freshmeat]

I believe there are 4-6 classes in lower grade. During my visit, I'm pretty happy with the teachers and class. I'll PM you the admission director email.

[pupsiecola]

I could not recommend SAIS. We were there for most of last year. Our youngest DS (age 8) needed some extra support with maths and after many months of meetings and lots of stress they gave us an ultimatum - to get him assessed by an ed psych or leave. They told us he has a learning disability and when we tried to explain that this wasn't something that had ever been brought to our attention before, or something we had ever considered before they told us we are in denial.

So we left. They sapped our DS's confidence so that he had barely any left. We had no other options open to us. Most of the International Schools are the same and their websites usually say that they don't offer learning support. The standards are incredibly high. DS got to the point where he became very withdrawn.

I looked at home schooling and various other options. But 3 weeks ago we returned to the UK and the boys are very happily settled into a great state school and loving it.

[pupsiecola]

Meant to say, no, they do not teach to the lowest common denominator. They expect the kids to be at a certain level and if they're not you have various options such as pay an extra £2k per month for a shadow teacher.

The school, in my opinion, is growing too fast. When we saw it last year there were 600 pupils. There are now around 1500. The teachers my children had were good, especially my eldest DS's teacher who was wonderful. My eldest DS enjoyed school and didn't struggle with the academics.

I have since heard others say that the teachers are mostly good - the management however is not and I agree with this.

[floraybj]

I saw this forum about 6 months ago since my son was about to move to Stamford. I was unsure if the comment posted here is true or is individual experience, not general. I did had doubt and did interviewed my son in other schools but with all the big promise from admission, I did sent my son to Stamford last Aug.

It was a very hopeful start and ended with very painful experience. I agreed management was not good. The problem is management there are business people not educators. You can feel the difference when you have a chance to talk to them. Second, as the school expand too fast, you can actually see how the advertise everywhere where such advertisment is very rare from schools, the home teacher that my son had had flight attendance background that arrive Singapore only 1 month. Parents from the class are shocked as we were told the school pay high and have the best teachers in Singapore. So, in my case, it was a money loosing painful experience. We left the school in 2 weeks, found a school temporary and finally move back to Y2 in Jan for my son.

I would say if you child is the normal dominator, you like large school with nice ad, give it a try. If not, there are many other choices where money are put into teacher quality and run by educators.

[PNGMK]

SAIS is a for profit school. That's all you need to know about it.

[floraybj]

This echo why I had such a bad experience with SIAS knowing they are for profit. It is a commercial product.