SJI International School - 490 Thomson Rd

The admission test costs 1k and is administered only after the school has gathered enough prospective students (to refuse). One star because the school has not been honest in revealing the vacancies left and the number of applicants applying for the same grade. They can take in 50 applicants at one grade for admission test when there are only 5 vacancies. That means there will be 45 disappointed applicants which they are prepared to reject / refuse. Admission test thus becomes a very lucrative business for the school.

Too expensive for my liking; plus the teachers weren't that good?!?!?!?

According to one of the reviews here, I agree with the unacceptable behavior of both the staff and students. The stories I have about these are too countless, but this one takes the cake- Challenge Week was the most abyssmal idea of an event. IB students (who would be below 18 at that time) are forced to go on a camp without any supervision from staff or parents. They claimed this was for "preparing students for university" and that it would be beneficial if "they did some service work there". They did not do any research on the places we were travelling to and forced us to stay in poor or even dangerous living conditions. This "so-called camp" goes against child endangerment laws as the wellbeing and safety of the students are at risk. Fortunately, I still survived this event, but what if there is a student who gets abducted, with no means of communication to save themselves? Or even worse, what if they become targets of various crimes that may occur in the places they travel to? If members of staff or supervisors can't save them, who will? They may go missing forever. And the school will be to blame.

SJII is a very good school. My child has been studying there since he was at elementary and now he is going to graduate from the high school at the end of this year. Time really flies! I am very happy and satisfied with this school as the teachers really care about the children's behaviours , well-being and learning, unlike some of the other international schools which just want to make money and use the marketing strategies to promote themselves. Before join SJII, my child studied in other three international schools and SJII is the best and also his favourite one. During the past 7 years, I barely have been worried about my child's learning and happiness at SJII. None bully issue has happened as far as I know. I personally highly recommend SJII. Thank you for taking care of my child, SJII. We will miss you.

Lots of bullying and teachers who give up easily on students who don't score well. Teachers will mostly compare them to those with higher grades, causing low self esteem and low motivation. Once in a while, there might be a great teacher that cares about all their students but one is not always so lucky.

After Mr Robert left SJII, the school seems to be managed by a bunch of vice principals who are not capable enough to handle school issues. The new principal , Ms Roisin Paul is invisible . SJII , as I knew, used to be a school that has a proper rule and regulation. Now I often see a boy and a girl kiss each other at the school drive ways while waiting for the grab ; students with colorful hair coming to school; girls wearing very short skirts to expose their legs or shock to know about a scandal of a boy and a girl inside a toilet. I don’t think It is acceptable in a Lasallian Catholic School like SJII. Furthermore, the school does not care about the feedback from parents or students with regards to the quality of the teachers. Many of the teachers can’t teach , but school still keeps those teachers. If you pay premium school fees for your children just to come to school to hear teachers who even teach the subject wrongly or teachers who do not follow a proper syllabus, I don’t think our children will gain anything from SJII. We even have to pay extra $ to hire private tutors to help our children with their subjects. It’s inappropriate for the school to be proud of its IB performance of their students because to earn such IB performance, students have to spend hours with their outside tutors after their school in order to understand the subjects well as they don’t get it enough from their school teachers and the parents must have extra budget to pay tutors for their children . If it is not because of their outside tutors , it’s impossible to survive in IB by relying to the the bunch of poor quality teachers at SJII. It’s time for the school CEOs to wake up and review the performance of the school leaders and the quality of all teachers. School leaders should replace poor performance teachers with responsible and skillful teachers. It’s not fair for students who get unqualified teachers , but they have to stay with the same teachers for 2 years in IB and struggle for the entire 2 years.

Highly sought after school in Singapore. They have been delivering good IB scores when compared to the other 2 local international schools in Singapore. They charge a premium for application fees when compared to the other 2 schools. However, they are not transparent with the number of vacancies left! And their fees are higher as well.

My kids have been to 3 different international schools since we move around a bit, SJII has to be the greatest disappointment. It is such a “cold” school with a lack of communication to parents. I once wrote an email to the principal and was called by the admin office to direct all concerns to them instead of sending it to the principal - That should have been a huge warning sign to me. They definitely do not live up to the LaSallean values that they proudly preach and it’s just any organization that focuses solely on the profitability and their ranking. School “counsellors” weren’t even able to give me better insights than my own research online. Be prepared to spend a bomb on extra tuition even after paying the hefty school fees.