American International School

[buysider]

Hi,

We're looking to enroll our daughter in AIS this fall.

Any thoughts on the school?

Thanks in advance.

 

[MommyTo3]

Don't hear great things about it. It's not truly an American school, very Asian. I think you'll find more information by searching through older threads.

 

[Sleuth]

I'd agree. You never hear anything positive about it. We did tour it though, and still rejected it.

 

[mumofone]

I took an american client for a tour around this school - yes very asian and all I could hear was cantonese being spoken in the playground. We werent impressed.

 

[Sleuth]

From what we saw, all schools are mostly Asian. Sort of comes with the territory.
Especially if you just look at "Asian" and not "Chinese", "Japanese", "Korean", plus the ABC, BBC, CBCs out there.
But our tour of schools did not include the Island (too far).

 

[hkpsufan]

did you end up sending your daughter there?? Amazing that people come to Asia and then complain that Asians are in the school. If you want only white people then stay at home and don't go abroad. My kids have gone to international schools around the world. They have met and made friends with kids across the globe. I honestly feel it has made them better people because of this. They look at other kids as just that ... other kids. Not Asian, or black or white or blue or green. Look at the university list for this school.. they are sending kids to top universities. Better then 85% are going to uni. But some people would rather have their kids in an all white school instead of a school that broadens them.

 

[MommyTo3]

did you end up sending your daughter there?? Amazing that people come to Asia and then complain that Asians are in the school. If you want only white people then stay at home and don't go abroad. My kids have gone to international schools around the world. They have met and made friends with kids across the globe. I honestly feel it has made them better people because of this. They look at other kids as just that ... other kids. Not Asian, or black or white or blue or green. Look at the university list for this school.. they are sending kids to top universities. Better then 85% are going to uni. But some people would rather have their kids in an all white school instead of a school that broadens them.

I think you're misunderstanding. My children currently go to an ESF school where the majority is Asian, I would say more than 75-80%. This is absolutely not an issue for us. We love it, they love it. However, we chose to send our children to an international school where the primary language is English. Although our school is very supportive with their mother tongue programs, communication is primarily in English, also at the playground.

From what I've seen and heard the level of English spoken at AIS by students is not great, especially in the early years as there are lots of non-native speakers / speakers who's first language is not English.

 

[hkpsufan]

Simple misunderstanding then. Certainly all schools in HK are very international and the levels of English will vary. At the primary level you would expect that some non-English speakers will have problems. My children are much older so the level of English at the higher levels is not an issue.
I guess what I was hoping to hear/learn here is some solid facts. Do they have a high rate of teacher turnover, are the sports and after school programs good quality, do they have a high graduation rate and acceptnce to college. Certainly if you have younger kids though issues may not matter at this time, but in my case they do. Last year they sent kids to U of Penn, Cal-Berkeley, NYU and Northwestern to name a few. All top notch American universities. A bad school with bad teachers does not send kids to those schools. Thanks for the response.

 

[MommyTo3]

Simple misunderstanding then. Certainly all schools in HK are very international and the levels of English will vary. At the primary level you would expect that some non-English speakers will have problems. My children are much older so the level of English at the higher levels is not an issue.
I guess what I was hoping to hear/learn here is some solid facts. Do they have a high rate of teacher turnover, are the sports and after school programs good quality, do they have a high graduation rate and acceptnce to college. Certainly if you have younger kids though issues may not matter at this time, but in my case they do. Last year they sent kids to U of Penn, Cal-Berkeley, NYU and Northwestern to name a few. All top notch American universities. A bad school with bad teachers does not send kids to those schools. Thanks for the response.

No worries. Just go and ask. My children were very young when I looked at it and I didn't ask for secondary education. I have seen a nice list of very good schools printed on their page, but with lists like that (in general) I always wonder, how many kids a year actually go to these schools? All those lists look very similar with all the good schools, but it makes a difference if there is just 1 a year (or every few years) or multiple a year going. Or did somebody go to a certain school 10 years ago. Know what I mean? In general the level in Hong Kong is still very high compared to many (public) school districts in the US, the US does not rank great when it comes to education compared to other developed countries. Just need to ask the schools for more specifics I guess.

 

[hkpsufan]

You make a good point about colleges. Go to the website, click About and then AIS at a glance. On that page it has a link to the class of 2011. They had 100% graduation record and they list the schools that the class is going to. 3 kids to Cal-Berkley, 4 kids to the Uni of Illinois (which is one of the top engineering schools in the world now. hard to believe when i was growing up it was the fall back school for everyone), Johns hopkins, GW, Wake Forest, William and Mary.... it is pretty damn good list. I am still hoping someone will read our posts and give me me some solid reasons ont he negatives of this school but no luck so far.