Australian school to expand again

BARELY three months after the Australian International School opened an extension for its preschoolers, it is making plans to expand again, with a new wing to house senior students.

The $33 million project at its Lorong Chuan campus will create space to take in another 600 senior students when it is ready by April 2010.

And while the previous expansion focused on the preschool and junior school, the Australian school is planning to expand its secondary school cohort because expatriates are now staying longer in Singapore, it said.

A bus bay, open-air carpark and canteen will be torn down by the end of the year to make way for a two-storey building with up to 35 classrooms and specialist science teaching laboratories as well as open study areas.

Principal Peter Bond said he was not perturbed by the current economic crisis and was thinking long term when he decided to go ahead with the new wing. 'It would be foolish to delay just because things might soften in the short term, when in the long term we know that the Singapore Government's policies on expansion of population and growth of business need international schools,' he said.

While the demand for places over the last five years has grown steeply, Mr Bond said he expected it to slow down or even plateau over the next 12 months.

'But I'm optimistic that it will pick up eventually. Businesses go through cycles,' he said.

The new wing will add at least 50 places to each level in the secondary school, enabling the school to take up to 200 children per level from Year 7 to Year 12.

The school, which has already reached full capacity for most of its junior section, decided to increase places for older students as expatriate parents are tending towards longer stays here, he said.

'The average stay has gone up from an average of 21/2 years to about four years. People have a longer term view on what it means to work offshore now, plus there are good educational choices for high levels available in Singapore,' Mr Bond said.

The school, which now has about 2,150 students, will see another 200 joiners come January. It expects to reach its capacity of 3,000 in the next five years.

Though demand for places at international schools has been increasing, the recent economic slowdown has caused some other schools to rein in their expansion plans.

The Government recently released new land parcels for up to four schools to be opened next year but some now prefer to wait it out.

One of them is the Global Indian International School, which opened its third campus in Balestier this year.

Chairman Atul Temurnikar said: 'Sooner or later, Singapore will feel the impact of the global crisis. We want to take a cautious approach since we have vacancies in our campuses, before expanding again.'