International school big on Chinese - Singapore
By Ho Ai Li
IT IS an international school catering mainly to Australian and British pupils, but it is not uncommon to hear Mandarin being spoken in the classrooms at Avondale Grammar School.About eight in 10 students in this private school in Toa Payoh, which runs on an Australian curriculum, take Chinese. A second language is compulsory, and French is the other option.
School headmistress Fran Hazell said at the school’s official opening yesterday: ‘People are very open to learning new things… and they want to absorb almost everything. It’s going to be a language that is going to be used a lot.’
Having led the school through its set-up in the last year, she is taking her leave, and will be replaced by Mr Martin Tait. Under his watch, the school will bump up its enrolment, just like what other international schools here are doing, on the back of an influx of expatriates coming here to work.
The Australian International School, for example, has a waiting list with hundreds of names.
Avondale, which started taking in pupils last July, now has 106 aged five to 11. It will start taking in students aged 12 and above in two years; enrolment will go up to 250 eventually.
Ms Hazell said the school started out with plans for a ’smaller’ campus: ‘We feel for young children; it is very important that they have a smaller environment so they can identify with and feel that they belong in our community.’
The teacher-pupil ratio is 1 to 11 for pre-school, and 1 to 24 for primary levels.
Just over six in 10 pupils are Australian and another two in 10, Britons. Four Singaporeans attend its pre-school.
Two teachers from China take the children through daily Chinese lessons lasting 20 to 45 minutes each.
Housewife Tracy Maclean, 33, who moved here from Sydney with her husband and children last year, was keen for son Joshua, seven, and daughter Amy, five, to learn Chinese.
She said: ‘We are going to be here for at least three years. We want the kids to be part of the country. To be part of the country, obviously they’ll have to learn the language.’
Parents pay $4,725 a term, or almost $19,000 for four terms a year.
Source : Straits Times - 15 March 2008
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