Taking the long view

At the moment Bangkok International Prep is one building and a construction site, largely hidden from view on Sukhumvit 53. You probably won’t even see the sign unless you look for it. That will soon be changing in a very big way.

International kindergartens abound in the area, but there’s not much in the way of international schools in the immediate neighbourhood. That is about to change.

About a hundred metres into the soi there is a small, relatively unassuming construction site. The sign outside says "Bangkok International Prep School". At the moment, it’s not much – only one completed building with a second L-shaped building slowly taking shape.

Don’t be fooled. This is only phase one of what promises to be a very impressive project indeed. When fully completed a decade or so in the future, Bangkok International Prep will stretch all the way from its present site to Sukhumvit Road itself. It will be a full-fledged British-oriented international school, accepting students from the ages of three to 18.

Phase one, from reception (roughly equivalent to Thai kindergarten) through year two is scheduled to open this August. Recently, the learning post paid a visit to find out about that programme and the plans for the school as a whole.

Headmaster Andrew Cruickshank plans to devote the rest of his career to the project.

"Absolutely fascinating," is the way headmaster Andrew Cruickshank describes the task ahead of him.

"Nine rai on Sukhumvit 53 in the city of Bangkok is very exciting,"Cruickshank says. "There are fifteen kindergartens within walking distance and if there isn’t a real quality educational opportunity here, these children have to travel one hour, one and a half hours. Wherever you travel in Bangkok, there’s hassle. So, to actually have a project in this part of the city. It’s very exciting."

For Cruickshank, whose long career has taken him to international settings as far apart as Buenos Aires and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this is a ten-year project. "I’m committing the rest of my career to it," he says.

For the owners, Patrada Yomnak and Uruguayan Magdalena Urioste Young, the school represents the final piece of a complete educational package.

"They have been involved in the bottom end of education with kindergartens in Bangkok, Hanoi; and they’ve also been involved in the high end with schools to teach English. They really felt that they wanted to combine all their experience and put in a complete package from three years of age all the way through," Cruickshank explains.

The owners, he says, have essentially given him a blank slate. "They told me they wanted a British curriculum school. That’s it," he says.

It is hardly a hands-off relationship, however, as the three have been working very closely together to make the school a reality.

Cruickshank says they began with a very basic question. "Where do you want to be in ten years time? What is your vision for this international school based on the British curriculum in the centre of Bangkok in ten years? And we started from there."

One of the first things to come out of this exercise was the school’s name, Cruickshank says.

"When we started looking at what we wanted to be, the prep school world had all the attributes that we were seeking. I like the name prep school. It is to prepare pupils. But we’re preparing for life. So the word ‘prep’ actually fits very well with what we’re trying to do."

Traditionally, British prep schools only go up to the age of 13, so Cruickshank says the name of the senior school has been left open. That could depend very much on the type of curriculum that is chosen, be it A-levels or the International Baccalaureate which has been adopted by many local British-based international schools.

With the name out of the way, discussions turned to fundamental issues like the proper ethos of the school and technical details like whether or not to have a uniform. (It will).

That settled, Cruickshank says the team had to quickly tackle the next big question: ‘How are we going to get there. How are we going to take this and make it happen?’

"And so we started prioritising what we wanted to happen. In my experience, everybody in education knows that if you really want to succeed it’s all based on the quality of your teachers. So we started off saying that we have to make sure that if we are going to be successful in this project that we are prepared to put the commitment into the quality of staff," Cruickshank recounts.

"Yes, we want swimming pools. We want sports halls. We want music centres, we want all that, but you can actually have first class quality education without all those things. So how are we going to get there? We’re going to get there first and foremost by making a genuine commitment to the quality of teaching that will go on in the school."

The teaching staff for phase one of the project has now been chosen. Apart from the Thai language and culture staff, the recruitment was done entirely in the UK.

"They’re all fully qualified teachers. They’re all British trained," Cruickshank says of his UK staff.

"I’m looking at a team. I don’t believe that in any size staff team you want them all to be the same. You don’t want them all to be towards the end of their careers. On the other hand, you don’t want them all to be straight out of college, so my ideal staff is that you have a few that are very young, very up to date with knowledge, very enthusiastic, very motivated. You have a group of staff who’ve been in teaching for a number of years who are ambitious, who want to experience different environments. Then you have the final group who are more experienced. They’ve been in the profession for quite a long time and they can give experience to the school that others can’t give."

For the younger children, Cruickshank says it is vital to have a mix of men and women teachers.

"One of the things I’ve always attempted to do, and I will do here, is to have men teaching in the bottom part of the school. Not because men teachers are better than women teachers or vice versa. You’ve got boys and girls in a school and they need male and female role models.

"Sadly, in the international market, often the father and the father’s work mean that the contact between father and children is less than maybe they want it to be – a lot of travelling, demanding hours, a lot of pressure at work. But children need to grow up with both male and female role models," Cruickshank stresses.

According to Cruickshank, one of the trademarks of his school will be small class sizes. This, he says, will allow teachers to identify and meet individual needs, something which will be particularly important in phase one of the programme, the early years.

At this level, the school is accepting students on a first come, first serve basis, virtually assuring that each class will have a wide range of abilities. But this is true in almost any class, he says.

"If you look at a group of four year olds, for example, within that group, you’ve got an incredible range of maturity, development and intellect. Because we’re going to be very small with very small class sizes, we will meet the needs of each and every pupil in what I think is a much more appropriate way (than schools with larger class sizes)", Cruickshank says.

Just how small classes will be for the first intake remains to be seen. Bangkok has an extremely competitive international school market and it is almost impossible for a small new school to accurately estimate the initial intake.

"There’s a maximum number," Cruickshank says. "It’s 64 because we’re only opening with four classes, average class size of 16. If you ask me how many we need, we don’t. We could start with ten, 15, 20, 30."

Cruickshank is not unduly concerned about this uncertainty. A big reason is that he doesn’t have to be self-financing for the first year. This allows him to take the longer view of the project.

"This is a project that isn’t about this year. This is a project that’s about three years, seven years, ten years. And, as long as somebody’s not saying to me, I have to create X number of baht this year, then we can do that.

"So, for instance, if I bring in teachers to cover four classes and we have three classes, that really isn’t an issue because we will utilise those teachers to create documentation, to create all the things that you need in a school for a school to be successful.

"We’ve got four classes, so we have a class teacher for each class, a key stage one coordinator. We have EAL specialists coming in and then we have ICT specialist coming in. We’re dealing with very small children, but we still need to have specialists."

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The school will follow the British national curriculum, but not in a lockstep way, Cruickshank stresses.

"We are an international school in Bangkok, so for us to say that we’re going to pick the British national curriculum up and plunk it in Bangkok, I don’t think would be particularly realistic.You actually take the best bits out of the British national curriculum as your foundation. I’m looking for a curriculum that has breadth and depth," he says.

At the reception level, there are targets in both language and number skills, both core elements of the revised British curriculum. For Cruickshank, however, this is only a small part of what needs to be done at this level.

"You should be looking at life skills, social skills, cultural skills and physical skills. That includes a range of skills such as musical skills and coordination skills," he explains.

This broad approach is not always well understood by parents, he admits. "It’s amazing the number of parents who have an expectation that their children will write at four years of age when they can’t catch a ball, when they can’t use scissors. When you look at catching a ball or using scissors, the skills required are significantly less than writing.

"So I think you’ve got to look at a whole range of skills from their youngest age. There are hundreds of skills. The skill of saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. The skill of sharing. The skill of relating to adults and communicating with adults."

Above all, students will be able to move at their own speed, Cruickshank says. "You will have certain children arriving in reception who already have number skills – who can already take number and number and add them together. There will be children who can’t do that at the end of reception."

The key is recognising and accepting that students have different strengths and weaknesses, he continues. "Some will be excellent at language and struggling a little bit with numbers. Some will be excellent at numbers and struggling a little bit with language. You have to know that and the larger your class sizes, the less able you are to really get under the skin of the pupils and find out what their strengths and weaknesses are. Once you identify their strengths and weaknesses, then you’re in a position to help them more," he says with obvious conviction.

Cruickshank readily admits there are limits to what a school can do. The parents obviously play a vital role he says. The aim, therefore is to get the school and parents to work closely together with the child as a cohesive team.

"The school can’t educate the child in isolation and I don’t believe the parent can educate the child in isolation. So you’ve got a team of three. Mom and Dad are one player. The school’s the second player and the child is the third player and all three have to be going in the same direction.

There has to be a close, trusting relationship between home and school. Within that, is the school being honest with parents about the strengths and weaknesses of their child? That means not hiding the weaknesses because it’s so easy to do that. But actually identifying the weaknesses and saying to the parents, we have an issue here. And then sitting down with the parents and identifying the way of solving that issue rather than sweeping it under the carpet and pretending it doesn’t exist. As parents, we want our children to be good at everything, but for most of us that’s not realistic.

For information call Bangkok International Prep at 02-712-9795 or 712-5817

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Last modified: June 10, 2003