BANGKOK, Nov. 9, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shrewsbury International School Bangkok, today, announced that it is building a new city-centre primary school for 640 pupils on a prime 2.4-hectare site in Bangkok located between Sukhumvit and Rama IX roads with an investment of US$78 million, and due to open in August 2018.
The new city-centre campus complements Shrewsbury International School Bangkok's riverside campus next to the Chao Phraya River that runs through Bangkok. The riverside campus was established in 2003 with the support of Britain's highly respected Shrewsbury School and is now regularly ranked among the best schools in the region.
The new, city-centre campus aims to help accommodate the large waiting list of children seeking a place at the primary school at Shrewsbury's riverside campus. Enrolments for places at the city-centre campus for the academic year commencing August 2018 have commenced, with 40 places already taken up.
Mr. Chali Sophonpanich, Founder of Shrewsbury International School Bangkok, said,
"We aim to build Thailand's best primary school at the new site. It is being purpose-built for young children and raises the bar in primary school education in Thailand. A modern, technologically advanced learning environment, security, and plenty of natural greenery are all designed into the school from inception. And we're staffing it with some of the best primary school teachers who will leverage Shrewsbury International School Bangkok's highly acclaimed curriculum and its impeccable 15-year track-record in Thailand."
He said, "The availability of great schools is a major factor determining the attractiveness of Thailand as a foreign investment destination and creating one of the best primary schools in Asia will be an important addition to Thailand's global competitiveness."
Mr. Stephen Holroyd, Director of Schools for Shrewsbury International in Asia and an educationalist with twelve years' experience in Thailand as Principal of Shrewsbury's outstandingly successful riverside campus in Bangkok, said, "Shrewsbury Bangkok's riverside campus is attracting a lot of talented children because of its proven ability to develop well-rounded graduates who are academically and professionally successful and are inculcated with the best human values. Parents seek to place their children at Shrewsbury right from the first years of education and that has created a particularly long waiting list for a place in the early years where we have around 75 places open, annually."
"In the last three years, we have been compelled to turn away more than 650 well qualified children who were applying for a place in our primary school at the riverside campus due to the limitation of places. Our new campus provides those extra places for deserving children while also giving us an opportunity to build a campus that is specifically designed for children aged 3 to 11 years," he said.
According to Mr. Holroyd, "Developing a great school requires continuity in the cadre of teaching staff which is why the Principal of the primary school at our riverside campus, Ms. Amanda Dennison, is the new Principal of Shrewsbury's City Campus."
"She will ensure that the same values and teaching standards in our riverside campus are embedded into the new city campus from the start. Paramount among her missions is to provide the holistic education that Shrewsbury is famous for, which develops children both academically and emotionally, and to provide contextualised teaching in a collaborative learning environment that prepares children well for university life and the transformed world of the future," Mr. Holroyd said.
Ms. Dennison said, "In the new city campus, while English is the core language of instruction, we are placing special emphasis on embedding the best possible Thai and Chinese language instruction into our teaching and learning. As a result, all of our students will have outstanding English language skills, while at the same time they will be highly proficient in the Thai language as well as have a strong foundation in the fundamentals of Mandarin Chinese."
Among the design innovations at the city campus is the arrangement of classrooms into a unique cluster formation that creates a better learning environment by maximising the connectivity of classrooms and children, and stimulating greater interaction of children with each other across different classes.
The classrooms for children aged 3 to 5 years are placed in a separate area which has an extra layer of safety as well as a separate dining hall and kitchen that are designed to be age-appropriate.
The new city campus has a gross floor area (GFA) of 25,000 sqm and includes a 520-seat auditorium. The school's 2.4-hectare land area contains a large swimming pool complex, natural turf playing fields, as well as indoor and outdoor athletics tracks.
