I am not an ISF parent but my nephew is an ISF student.
ISF started out marketing themselves as a to-be IB school when they first open. I cannot remember whether they put this on their pamphlets but definitely, they did told parents at talks or open days that they are adopting the IB curriculum. They spent a lot of time explaining how good and beneficial the IB program is.
However, a few months ago, their application for PYP was rejected, AND THEN they started to claim that they do not really care whether they are IB accredited. They have even started "educating" parents that PYP is in fact not that beneficial and ISF does not need to run PYP at all. That sounded like sour grapes to me.
ISF is (still) proud of their "70% Chinese in lower primary to 70% English in secondary" language environment. Things would be so perfect: children (mostly native Cantonese speaking) would use mostly Chinese in primary and then they would gradually and eventually move to English immersion. Isn't that wonderful? Ideally, ISF students should have solid Chinese skills and by the time they leave high school, they should also be very competent in English.
However, even within 2 years, I can say that this model is going to fail for the majority of people. My nephew in P4 constantly need help with his Chinese because it is very hard. His English is also poor because he is not using English as much now. Can you imagine. He was from a LOCAL SCHOOL and now at ISF, his English has gone poorer?
Practically, for most average international school students, they would not need any after school tutor at all. However, my nephew needs a tutor for everything. A school must have its edge to charge that fee. And I cannot see why I want to pay that much for such a curriculum. I would appear to me that it is probably not much better than most Chinese local schools, except the class size is smaller.
Okay, people may say that the problem must be with my nephew. But I have gone through these 2 years with him too and I can say that the curriculum is far from being even close to an IB school. It is also no where even close to any other international schools. From what I see, it is a local school with smaller class size and expensive fees.
The teachers are mostly locals and are not qualified IB teachers. Some probably have never taught with any international school or IB school before, because the way they teach or deal with the students are the same as any old-fashioned local schools. When a student has problem with school work, they do not offer any help outside the classroom. So there is basically no use going to the teachers to seek help during break time.
My nephew is happy, though, at school, because he has a few good friends now. So this may be the luckiest part of everything. However, my sister wanted to transfer him out of ISF but he has failed in all applications with international schools. Even with Yew Chung which is known to have slightly lower expectation with English, They only offered to put him in the IEP program, which is a special English immersion class, because his English was considered poor. For comparison, another friend's daughter with a local school has successfully secured a place from Yew Chung without the need to go for any special english immersion class.
Tricky enough, it appears that ISF has never said that they are an international school. My sister threw away all pamphlets she got 2 years ago but I think they never used the term "international school". And strangely, I saw that their most recent advertisement in newspapers are in fact marketing themselves as "a Chinese school". This is again a shock to me.
IBO has strict language requirements. A school has to have the environment to qualify a language as a "first language". With the swifting Chinese vs English proportion, I think that was one of the reasons why ISF failed in getting accreditation. I am suspecting that they are trying to make it up by choosing between Chinese and English as their first language so that they can get IB accreditation. Obviously, with almost 100% local Chinese students, and 70% of Chinese in primary school, it would be impossible to make English their first language. So does it mean that they have settled to use Chinese as a first language. And thus the advertisement as "a Chinese school"?
In an era when even local schools are switching to more English, I do not see the edge of ISF identifying themselves as "a Chinese school" (and parents paying the premium!), except that this was for a second try for IBO accreditation.
The school is only a few years old and things have already been so unpredicatable. I do not see why they did not seek professional consultation BEFORE setting up the school. Most things they do have never been like any other IB school. They do not have IB qualified teachers. Everything was just not done in accordance to IBO standard. The application last time was in fact a waste of time and money.