International School in Bangkok
The only thing that attract a huge amount of foreigners to Thailand, possibly, is because of the easiness access to get a job by becoming a school teacher in Bangkok. Why, even a high school leaver can teach in Bangkok as long as you can speak English and you are a “farang”.
Although I am not a teacher here, I have been understand that the criteria for teaching has been revised since the detention of the America school teached who killed the school girl and making the headlines months ago. Before this, a lot of unqualified teachers all over the world apparently dotted the schools around Bangkok. My doubt here is:- What is the quality and how good are the international schools here in Bangkok? The amount of money that we are paying for a 7 year old kid per year here is enough to spend it on a university course fee per year alone overseas! Serious! So, are the money we are paying is worth it?
Just to give you a rough idea, school fees here for an average one cost you 180,000 Baht to 250,000 Baht per year. Thats USD 5142 (35Baht to 1 USD exchange rate) for you, mind you. And THAT excludes other fees which you will be surprised upon discovering. How about High end schools? A good school like Bangkok Patana will cost you 500,000 Baht per year! If your child starts his entire education there until pre-university, ie 12 years, that will be a whopping 6,000,000 Baht (USD172,000) from your pocket! Talk about figures!
However, Bangkok Patana has its good points. All the teachers has a minimum of university graduates related to their field of teaching. If one is teaching Physics, the school ensures that his field of graduate is Physics. And the quality of teaching at Bangkok Patana is also of high standard too. Well, guess the money is worth spending but then again, compared to my country, this is way too high.
I sent my kid to Bangkok International School and as I am not earning a high paid salary and as the fees are not covered by my company, I can only afford to send him to an average school. And the good thing about this school is they allow you to pay instalments scheme, which suits my budget perfectly well. How is the quality of the school? I guess there are some advantages when you pay so much. For a start, the amount of students is much lesser than in Malaysia and the concentration of teaching the students is more confined, hence more attention will be given to them. His class just stands at 12 people and you can be sure that any flaws or mistakes in his homework will be attended to. After each term exam, all parents will be invited to review his exam results and the teacher will explain where is his weak points and also his strong points.
Last term we were invited to the school to review his results and to our surprise, the teacher took this particular subject, Writing, to our attention. We thought there were some big problems but when he told us the reason, we were rather shocked an pleased. Apparently, the teacher says that Jason, my son, has done particularly well last term especially in his reading and writing English. He show us the essay that Jason has written during the exam and after readng it to us, I felt that the money is really worth spending. Well, I must admit that he do talks English from the day he was born but apart from that, didn’t knew that his grammar was so well compiled too, almost perfect, in fact. Here is the question of the exam question and his answers.
Imagine that something in your room suddenly comes to life. Write a story about what happens to that object when it comes alive.
When I came home one day from school, I was very tired. I took out my pencil and eraser because I wanted to do my homework. In the middle of my homework there was a sudden burst of light. I had to close my eyes from getting too much light. When the light faded, I opened my eyes. I was very surprised that my pencil and eraser stood up suddenly. Then they grew eyes and mouths even my pencil case. I backed away a little. Then the pencil spoke, “ Hi, my name is Pencil”. Then the eraser spoke,”Hi, my name is eraser, and I’m from North America”. “Hey, wait for me” yelled the pencil case. “Hello, my name is Pencil Case”. Then I introduced myself.Then I asked them, “How did you come to life?” I asked curiously. “By the sudden light,” said the pencil. “We thought you needed our help for your homework”, said the pencil case and eraser. “Oh, yes, I do, if you can do it for me,” I said. So the eraser and pencil jumped on the paper. Whenever pencil wrote something wrong, eraser erased it and pencil rewrote it. Finally my homework is done. “Thanks for helping me,” I said. “No problem” said the pencil case. “Well, we better should go home now, bye!” said the three of them. Then there was the sudden light and my pencil and erased was down.
Not bad for a 9 year old kid, huh? Anyway, to be fair, I am sure most international schools here in Bangkok are pretty much well organized and have a pretty high standard of teaching. Picture of the school and my kids classmates.
