Education battle lines drawn

THE battle to win the hearts and minds of parents who want their children in Bahrain to receive a British-style education will intensify in the near future.

Currently St Christopher’s School and the British School of Bahrain lead the way and despite regularly increasing fees, both command waiting lists for certain year groups.

As highlighted in GulfWeekly, King’s Group will bring to Bahrain its ‘wide international experience from Europe and Latin America’ and speaking exclusively to GulfWeekly, its vice chairman, Nicholas Fry, is confident of making a positive impression.

“King’s College Bahrain will be a truly exceptional school,” he said. “It will bring the very best of Britain to Bahrain. Not just academically, which certainly it will, but also a British ethos and way of educating which is unique.

“We will also blend traditional elements of Bahraini culture so that locals can still learn about their language and heritage and expatriates can integrate quicker. We are very excited about this new addition to our family of schools.

“Bahrain has always been a country that has interested us because of the vast potential it has.”

Nicholas’s father Sir Roger Fry, knighted in 2012 by Queen Elizabeth II for promoting British education internationally, founded the first King’s College school in 1969, and the group’s schools now attract more than 4,500 students in total.

He said the company was approached by the managing director of J Equity, Dr Ahmed Al Jawhary, who introduced executives to Faisal bin Faqeeh. “It was a perfect partnership,” said Nicholas. “With Mr Faisal’s extensive knowledge in construction and development, and our experience in education, we will deliver the perfect package. We are completing plans and hope to have the building ready in 2018.”

King’s College Bahrain will be located almost opposite the causeway, next to the new IKEA, and will eventually cater for approximately 1,700 students. The head has already been selected and will be announced shortly.

“The school will have all facilities expected of a high quality British school,” Nicholas said. “In terms of academic facilities, aside from classrooms equipped with the newest teaching and educational technologies, we will have libraries, science laboratories, an auditorium, music and art rooms, and a sixth form room, among others.

“For sports, we will provide our students with a swimming pool, running tracks and several playing fields. We will also have several playgrounds equipped with high quality play equipment and safety surfaces.

“King’s Group will bring to Bahrain its wide international experience from Europe and Latin America. The school will benefit, not only from King’s Group’s well-established knowledge in the educational field, but also from its distinctive global approach, which will expand the pupils’ horizons and allow them to connect with more than 4,500 students and specialised teachers from all over the world.

“We are members of COBIS, HMC and are regularly inspected by the International School Inspectorate, which is a branch of the British Ministry of Education. Our reports for our schools are on our websites - this enables us to say to our parents: ‘We are British and inspected as if we were a school in the UK’. Very few schools outside of Britain do this.

“These inspections are also testament to the exceptional academic and pastoral standards that the schools embed: in our latest reports (March 2017), the schools had been qualified with ‘excellence’ in every category.”

The school will open from Nursery to Year 5 initially, although this may change subject to demand, but it will have no more than 20 students per class.

Schools fees have yet to be announced and will be published in November. “We believe in organic and sustainable growth,” added Nicholas. “The primary focus of any school should be the education of its students and that cannot be achieved by chasing profits. “We will grow slowly, opening first few Years Groups and then growing each year, until eventually all Year Groups will be open, catering up to Year 13 (age 18).

“Our group philosophy is to invest most if not all our profits back into our schools to ensure continued development, best practice and having the best infrastructure.

“With almost 50 years of experience, King’s Group has a long and distinguished history of educational leadership. Our vision is to be at the forefront of British education internationally and our mission is to provide high quality British education that delivers a transformative learning experience to all our pupils.”