The Start of SIS National Plus Schools

The success of the Singapore International School set up in 1997, allowed the Founders of the school and the educationists involved to deeply appreciate the complexities of subjecting Indonesian students to a curriculum modeled after the Singapore education system that demands high standards. The lack of proficiency in English and Mandarin and inconsistencies in the foundations of core subjects like Maths and Science observed in the pioneer batch of Indonesian students pushed for an immediate need for a carefully designed curriculum from that used in the Singapore International School. SIS started two pilot National Plus schools in Kelapa Gading (North east Jakarta) and Kebun Jeruk (West Jakarta) in 2002. The aim was to monitor the performance of the students in a “controlled environment” with the new designed SIS curriculum especially for the National Plus schools. After 2 years, SIS noted remarkable results of its students and decided it was ready to roll out the schools for the Indonesian student. The Schools were also to help ensure that people need not migrate from the provinces to major cities, and similarly those from major cites need not send their children out of Indonesia for the sake of quality education. SIS invited the International Finance Corporation (member of the Word Bank Group) to examine the results in these two pilot schools and sought a partnership with the IFC to expand its operations. After a period of due diligence that saw curriculum, systems and financials under scrutiny, IFC decided to partner with SIS, in this project. In a world-wide IFC press release in 2004, IFC East Asia Regional Director Javed Hamid described the project as …..”one that will extend access to high quality primary and secondary education in Indonesia.” The IFC press release also mentioned SIS “providing high quality education modeled after the Singapore curriculum.” With this support and other forms of technical assistance from experts in the IFC office in Washington, the Founders expanded SIS National Plus Schools under the brand name Singapore School (affiliated to Singapore International School). These echo the high quality curriculum in the Singapore International School.