Shrewsbury campus likely to open early

Shrewsbury International School has a new 15-rai Bangkok campus expected to open ahead of schedule after the remaining 20% of construction is finished.

The school’s second outpost in Bangkok will accommodate 640 pupils (aged 3-11) on a site between Sukhumvit and Rama IX roads. The total cost of the project is estimated at 2.6 billion baht.

The new city campus has a gross floor area of 25,000 square meters and includes a 520-seat auditorium, a large swimming pool complex, natural turf playing fields, and indoor and outdoor athletics tracks.

The chairman of the school’s Bangkok operations and a cadre of the school’s Britain-based governors are conducting a final inspection of the Rama IX site.

“The school will be ready ahead of schedule,” said David Lees, chairman of the school’s board of governors. “The physical construction is already 80% complete, and formal classroom teaching will begin in August this year, as planned.”

The school administration is pleased with the progress in teacher staffing and readiness of the curriculum for the first batch of young students, he said.

Teachers at Shrewsbury International School Bangkok’s riverside campus have been meeting regularly with teachers at the new city campus for start-up preparations, Mr Lees said.

Amanda Dennison, principal of the junior school at the riverside campus, will become the principal of the new campus and is serving as a liaison between the two teacher communities.

The school received 500 applicants for the 203 places available in the first year at the city campus, and 104 have already been tested, she said.

The school aims to be Thailand’s best primary school by implementing a curriculum based on the one at its riverside location, Ms Dennison said.

The riverside campus was established in 2003 in collaboration with the Shrewsbury School in England.

Eight of its graduates will matriculate at Oxford or Cambridge for the 2019 academic year.