In this article, we put forward some questions to a family who temporarily joined the St Andrews community from Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong, one of our sister schools in the region.
During the global pandemic of the past 2 years, families around the region have been put in very difficult situations. The Nord Anglia Education family harnessed the power of 77 schools in 31 countries to provide creative solutions to some of the challenges of school closures and travel restrictions.
Below, Hong Kong-based Aman Mehta, father of Reyna, has kindly answered our questions about their experience to give their daughter a learning experience she’ll never forget. We wanted to learn more about why they wanted to join St Andrews, how the transition has been and most importantly, how their child has felt about the move.
We moved to Hong Kong in 2017, and our eldest daughter Reyna joined a bilingual kindergarten whilst we began the difficult search for a school. We looked at many but were not aware of NAIS despite its popularity. In a sliding doors moment, we decided at the last minute to go to the open day and instinctively felt that it was the right school with the right balance of education, environment and care. We also learned about the global network of schools, including a well-known school in Bangkok. This made the decision even easier.
We love Hong Kong and everything that it offers, from cycling near the harbour, going to the beach, going hiking or eating at one of the many restaurants that HK has to offer. However, due to the schools closing and only offering online learning, we wanted to explore our options to see if we could leverage the global network of Nord Anglia schools. We decided to temporarily transfer our daughter Reyna from Hong Kong to Bangkok with the double benefit of being able to see her grandparents after over 2 years.
Actually, in one respect very easy and another respect, quite difficult.
We were really surprised at how easy the school made it to transfer our daughter and how welcoming they were. St Andrews and NAIS were constantly in touch through the process and even arranged several calls with Reyna’s new class teacher, who made her feel really excited to meet her new classmates. The transition could not have been any easier, and both schools did their absolute best to make it go very smoothly. The schools really stepped in when we needed them most and showed that they care during such a challenging period.
The difficult part was making the final decision as we really like Reyna’s teacher in Hong Kong, even during the Virtual School Experience. But we felt that we had the unique opportunity to give Reyna access to physical schooling, which is so important at her age.
Reyna has really enjoyed school. She has made friends and is really benefiting from physical teaching once again.
Wherever our students are located in the world, they all share the Nord Anglia Educational Experience. Whether through enhanced learning environments and challenges created through our first-rate collaborations with The Juilliard School, MIT, and UNICEF or internally on our Global Campus Platform, where 70,000+ students can collaborate virtually with one another in learning forums that interest them most. These experiences are all shared by NAE students and culminate with opportunities to meet up in person to tackle service-learning expeditions in all corners of the world (Tanzania & Operation Wallacea). Ultimately, whether students learn in Europe, Asia, The Americas or the Middle East, they all share similar first rate experiences.
With the goal of providing meaningful help to the flood victims in the northern regions of Thailand, our entire community at St Andrews Bangkok came together to raise funds and donations for the affected families. In the span of a few short weeks, added to donations of food and clothing, we managed to raise an astounding total of 386,676.50 THB in donation funds. To all students, teachers, parents, and staff who participated in our efforts and contributed to this cause—thank you!
Last Friday, the STA Primary campus was transformed into a celebration of all things maths! The day was packed with engaging, hands-on activities across all year groups, making maths truly come alive for our students.
Senior student at St Andrews Bangkok, Pun (Year 13), devises an innovative solution for effective waste management. Recently, he completed an ambitious project: an AI-powered waste sorting system. After much research and testing, he got the system to work and put the model to use in one of our rooms at school!
