West Island School or Kellett Senior School

My daughter will be entering into Year 7 in 2014. My husband and I are looking to decide whether to send our daughter to West Island School or Kellett School. It seems to me that both schools have good reputation and it is difficult to make a decision. I would appreciate for any comments or advice. If there are parents who have transferred their children from an ESF school to Kellett School, could you please share your experience on such transfer?

Hi,

We are familiar with their Chinese programs.

WIS has different streams, one is near native level and another is foreign language. Their near native program adopted Singapore textbooks, which are really difficult for non native students. But at foreign language level, it is too easy apparently.

Kellett has a relatively moderate Chinese program as we know.

Hope it may help Should have anything about Chinese program, feel free to contact us.

Thanks for your input, beijingmandarin. Much appreciated.

Other than the schools and important factor boils down to MYP / IB vs UK national curriculum.

MYP has just started at West Island. It is so new, a staff (non-academic) member we ran into a few weeks ago was not even aware of it. The ESF, based on our experience with Kennedy school is not good with implementing new programs. 5 years into PYP at Kennedy we were still hearing excuses like "this is new .. we're learning" and all that garbage. Perhaps that was result of the lack of leadership at Kennedy, perhaps not. Bottom line, we left Kennedy with little trust in the ESF's ability to establish basic standards across all schools.

The leadership at WIS is stronger than Kennedy, but still.. the question remains - do you want to be doing MYP or straight and standard UK national curriculum that Kellett follows. We know a few students (and parents) who are stressed about MYP and we also know parents and students who have taken it in their stride and are doing well.

Class and school sizes are another issue.

Kellett class size is 23 and they have 4 houses per year. WIS has a higher density (around 30 a class?) and more houses (6). This results in double the number of kids per year at WIS compared to Kellett.

We personally prefer the lower density and smaller year size - much more focus on the kids and over all better individualisation for the kids in my opinion.

Going into Y7 from ESF to Kellett was a smooth experience for our child -- once he got used to being given homework. First few weeks were a bit stressful as in our experience there was little or no homework in the ESF (specially Mandarin etc) and 4-6 hours homework a week at Kellett.

The staff at Kellett are very motivated and extremely professional in my experience with them and the core philosophies of the school are more in tune with what we expect from a school. Looking back at West Island I felt it was more of an academic factory.

Needless to say, the lower class density and fewer classes is reflected on the fees you pay at Kellett - if this is not an issue, I'd recommend taking a second and third look.

best of luck.

Thanks for your insight, ESFDAD. I shared similar view as you do on the benefits from small school and class size. It would work well for my daughter. I went to the Open Day at both West Island and Kellett Schools and liked what I saw at both schools. I particularly like the Arts activities/programs at West Island. I felt that the West Island principal has strong leadership skills. However, I also heard about the negative comments on other ESF schools. So, I'm not too confident on the overall ESF school system. With the recent changes on the ESF admission policy, I'm nervous that there may be more local students studying at West Island. My daughter is studying at a local school. The main reason of us switching to international school is to stay away from the high homework pressure. If there are more local students, it could possibly demand the school to push up the academic pressure. After considering various factors, I incline to go with Kellett.

With regard to school fees, are you aware of any big "hidden" costs in addition to the listed school fees?

Thanks again for your time taken to reply to my question.

Not aware of any major hidden costs @ Kellett.

Extra Curricular Activities
- Free to few hundred a term. Some of the more specialised ones like sailing etc may be more expensive.

Uniform & Sports
- A few more pieces of uniform need to be purchased - blazer etc.
- Some of the sports may need some additional equipment

Trips
- There may be an increased cost in some of the trips that the students take. Not sure what the ESF overseas / local trip costs are ( Educational Visits )


Debenture
- Again, this is documented for both schools. Not sure what the current costs are.

Overall, both the schools will have pressure from local students entering - there is a huge loss of confidence in the local system, specially from parents who can afford the fees in the various international schools. I don't think this will affect the homework pressure. I don't know what the homework is like in local schools (other than hearing complaints every now and then from expat friends who have their kids in local schools). I don't think either ESF or Kellett would get close to that sort of pressure in the near future.

I don't think you should be too concerned about more local students entering either schools, as long as they keep their entry criteria high. I have heard from parents that they've been disappointed by the quality of English at Harrow (too many kids not able to converse fluently at their age levels in English).

By the way, take a look at Kellett's Youtube and Facebook pages. They've done an excellent job highlighting non-academic areas.

Kellett School - YouTube

and

https://www.facebook.com/KellettSchool

Thanks for your informative information on Kellett, ESFDAD. Much appreciated.

HI GW,

May i know if your girl take the entrance exam with KELLETT? I was told a quantitative reasoning test for the applicant. Do You find it difficult?

Cheers

Originally Posted by GWong

Thanks for your informative information on Kellett, ESFDAD. Much appreciated.

We took the Kellett exam a couple of years ago. It's not that difficult, but we did a few practice tests to prepare. Just so that we were used to the style of questions, etc. Would recommend getting hold of some bond books from the UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_...-keywords=bond

My daughter took a written test at Kellett. Her impression to the test was 'quite hard'. She knows answers to some questions, but not others. She liked the essay writing part and thought that it was fun.