New Aussie option for International school students

(From left) Clifford Hii, Lee and Chong inspect a model of the Edusentral development.

PENINSULA International School Australia (PISA) will be the first school in Malaysia to offer Australia’s Victorian Curriculum (VC) to its students from next year. This will be made possible through a partnership between PISA and The Peninsula School of Victoria, Australia.

Currently, the VC is offered at 25 schools worldwide, in countries such as China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Vanuatu, Timor Leste and the United Arab Emirates.

The Peninsula School from Melbourne will be opening two campuses in Malaysia – in Setia Alam, Shah Alam and Menglembu, Ipoh. The school term for both will begin in January 2018, with enrolment beginning this March.

PISA is part of Edusentral, the brainchild of Tan Sri Clement Hii, executive chairman of HCK Capital Group. Edusentral combines residential and commercial units, with the educational component at the heart of the project.

“The majority of international schools here offer the IGCSE Cambridge curricula while a number offer the International Baccalaureate. There is only one Australian school here, but its curriculum does not come from Victoria state. Australian International School Malaysia’s curriculum is from New South Wales,” said HCK Education CEO Lee Kok Cheng.

“The VC is pretty controlled. To offer the curriculum outside Victoria, we must partner a local institution, which will control quality,” he added.

“Other international schools tend to develop their own curriculum. We are partnering a school that has almost 55 years of experience, and will replicate a tried-and-tested formula,” said Lee.

PISA is a boarding school open to Year 1 to 12 students. Like its Australian counterpart, it will offer the Victoria Certificate of Education, a university entrance exam recognised by leading tertiary institutes in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“We found that Australia is the choice destination for tertiary education among local students,” said PISA senior operations manager Jonathan Chong.

But there is a gap in the market here. Students who follow the Australian curriculum from primary to secondary will find the preparation and transition smoother should they decide to further their studies in Australia later on, added Lee.

“Students learning the curriculum here will get the same experience as those who are studying in Australia, but at a fraction of the price,” Lee said.

He explained that the school charges Tier 2 pricing for Tier 1 quality. This means students will have more expatriate teachers – one of the grading criteria for international schools – compared to other Tier 2 schools. It also means more value for what they pay for their education.

Students studying in PISA in Malaysia can opt to transfer to the main campus in Melbourne. The school fees for 2018 range from RM26,000 to RM53,000.

The campus will be equipped with facilities such as a library, science and computer laboratories, a football field, gymnasium, swimming pool, auditorium, theatres and tennis courts.

Hii, who is also group managing director of the SEGi University and College, believes that residential and commercial projects around schools or tertiary institutions will sell because they offer supporting infrastructure such as shops and residences.

It isn’t often that you find developers constructing a school first, followed by residential and commercial units.

“As a developer, we want traffic to be there,” said group executive director for HCK Capital Group Bhd Clifford Hii.

“After Phase 2 is complete, there is the potential of having over 2,000 students. It will be a thriving community,” added Clifford.

“There would be a captive population. Parents who send their children to school would hang out at the shoplots, and may even buy residences nearby,” said Lee, who added HCK Properties Sdn Bhd will develop the 4.86ha (12-acre) school project in Setia Alam.

Upon completion, the school will be managed by HCK Capital Group.

Listed on Bursa Malaysia in 2000 as an entity dealing with engineering and trading rubber related products, HCK Capital took on interests in property development, among others, after 2014.