Is garden international school or Alice smith school better?

Answer 1

oh, that is a tough one, but at the end everyone knows that things are not equal, if no one's perfect neither are schools....it all depends on how it is managed. Maybe, just maybe Garden International School is just a little better....but it's close! :)

Just to add some detail --

*both schools are a similar age (Alice Smith 1946 and Garden International 1951)

*both are a similar size and have a similar uniform.

*Alice Smith is an educational foundation, collectively owned by parents and governed by parents and trustees. Garden is a privately owned business operated by the Taylors Education Group.

*Alice Smith has a split campus. Primary is in town on Jalan Bellamy but secondary is half an hour away in Equine Park. Garden has a unified campus (apart from Early Years) in Mont Kiara for primary and secondary. This is a bit cramped but a good location if you can walk from nearby apartment blocks. There is an excellent astroturf all-weather pitch. However, traffic is terrible and it is hard to park.

*Both schools have infrastructure changes ahead. For Alice Smith a new road junction on the MEX Highway will reduce travel time to the secondary campus to 15 minutes, by 2014. The secondary campus has extensive playing fields and facilities. For Garden, there are early plans to move to a bigger site with more space out West (somewhere near to IKEA)

*As for teaching and learning, Alice Smith teachers are all British (or Australian/NZ/Canadian) trained whilst some of Garden teachers are locally trained.

*For GCSE, exam results are very similar at both schools

*For A2, exam results are historically better at Garden. However, Alice Smith operates more as a community school and does not have such a high selection bar for entry into Sixth Form. In value add, which shows how much improvement a school has added to its students (over their baseline ability) Alice Smith is in the top one percent worldwide. Don't know Garden's equivalent figure (not published on their website)

*Alice Smith did a British Schools Overseas Inspection in October 2011 and got a Grade 1 (excellent) for its secondary campus and a grade 2 (good) for its primary campus. Of course, Garden will likely do one of these BSO inspections (which is under the auspices of the Department for Education in London) soon.

*Fees are about the same