To greater heights
AT Epsom College in Malaysia, you will find a British education delivered to the highest standards one would expect from such an established and prestigious institution.
Epsom College in Malaysia was opened in 2014 as a branch campus of Epsom College in Surrey, the United Kingdom. The driving inspiration behind the college is Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, an Old Epsomian himself.
Fernandes is the chief executive officer of AirAsia, the winner of the World’s Best Low Cost Airline for several consecutive years. Fernandes is also chairman of Queen Park Rangers ( QPR) football club in London.
Despite these two high- profile operations, Fernandes states that his proudest achievement is setting up Epsom College in Malaysia. The college boasts a world- class, 50- acre ( 20.23ha) campus, with outstanding facilities for teaching, sports, music, drama, the arts, science and boarding.
Epsom has an outstanding teaching faculty, comprised almost exclusively of UK- trained, experienced and talented staff. It has talented, ambitious, humble pupils who relish the opportunities on offer, aspire to achieve academic success and are determined to give back to society at least as much as they have receiv
This selflessness and sense of ser cornerstones of the Epsom educatio philosophy. The school is to report set of public examination results. Typ new schools do not start with the Sixth Forms.
Epsom is far from a typical new school. It is an indication of the ambition and confidence of the board that they took on the decision to open with a Sixth Form and these sixth formers have exceeded expectations. At the A- Levels this year, 59% of grades were A* or A.
By way of comparison, Epsom College UK achieved 61% A* and A grades, which was a record. The college confidently expects its results next year to be higher and surpass the record achieved by the branch campus. The AS- Level results this year were 66% A and B grades and GCSE ( The General Certificate of Secondary Education) 55% of grades were A* or A.
Our first Upper Sixth batch students have gained places at many of the UK’s most prestigious Russell Group universities, y, including the London School of Economics and Political Science ( LSE), University College London ( UCL), Imperial College London, University of Exeter, University of Warwick, University of Manchester and University of Bristol.
Teaching at Epsom is inspiring, innovative, relevant and fun. Teachers are encouraged to develop their professional skills through collaboration across subject areas.
Epsom is continually looking for ways to improve, and within this philosophy we actively promote independent learning among pupils.
This is especially the case in the Sixth Form, where the talented team on staff have introduced a unique programme, known as Horizons, which has three key strands.
The first is the university style lectures, delivered by a mix of the school’s own staff, outside professionals and visiting university lecturers.
Secondly, there are small tutorial groups where students are exposed to teaching environments inspired by the Oxbridge tutorial system.
The third is the intern programme, whereby the school has teamed up with some of Malaysia’s most successful chief executive officers across many disciplines to provide internship and mentoring opportunities for all Sixth Form students.
For students aspiring to attend the top universities around the world, there is no better preparation than this cutting- edge Sixth Form programme. Boarding is an essential feature of the college. Around 80% of the senior school ( Year 7 to 13) are either weekly or full boarders.
Many of the students come from across Asean and beyond, including China, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. The majority, however, are Malaysian students.
Although Kuala Lumpur is only an hour away, most of those whose parents live there have chosen to board. We have six boarding houses, including two senior boys houses, two senior girls houses and two junior ( Years 7 to 9) houses.
Each house has a housemaster or housemistress and an assistant housemaster or assistant housemistress. All these staff members live in a self- contained apartment attached to the house, so that parents can be assured of the highest standards of pastoral care 24 hours a day.
Each house also has a matron or steward. Perhaps uniquely for British boarding schools, we have female matrons in the girls’ houses and male stewards in the boys’ houses.
Additionally, all staff are attached to a house in the capacity of a tutor. The overriding impression, which one gains from visiting any of the houses is that they are families, held together by a collective sense of purpose and identity, loyal to their aims and their people, striving to support and encourage each other, working out their disagreements in a loving and safe environment.
We guarantee to look after your children as if they were our own. Education is not simply about getting good grades. We would never be so arrogant or complacent to assume that other schools cannot also deliver a good academic education.
What we believe is unique to Epsom is the wider educational opportunity, which we provide. All of our staff live on site, something that no other school in Malaysia can match.
This makes our staff room a uniquely cohesive unit, but it also allows us to offer an unparalleled co- curricular programme.
At lunchtime, after school and at weekends, our staff are busy offering an impressive range of activities, including sports, performing and creative arts, leadership and outdoor training, community service and charitable activities, science and technology, debate, philosophy, gardening, environmental projects, climbing, dance, yoga, cultural learning, language, film and media.
What we aim to do is to open students’ eyes to the world, not necessarily by making them experts in any one field, but by showing them that trying something is, in itself, success.
We encourage students to lead these activities, consistent with our aim to develop in all students a sense of responsibility, accountability and leadership. They also get great A- Levels results.
The college offers some unique programmes to cater for the diversity of students who wish to attend the college. There is an 18- month A- Levels programme, which starts in January each year.
This is particularly for students in the Malaysian public education system, which runs to November each year. Entry standards for this programme are demanding, typically seven A* or A grades at GCSE.
The curriculum is narrower than the two- year programme, offering courses in mathematics, further mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, economics and politics.
Our Academic English Programme is geared towards younger students, usually between ages 10 and 13, whose levels of English are not yet of the standard required for the mainstream curriculum.
The Mother Tongue Programme caters for overseas students who require continued tuition in their own language.
The college embraces diversity. It is a wonderful thing to see students from so many cultural backgrounds mixing freely, learning from each other and enjoying the comradeship without any preconceived ideas.