Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong is leading the way in STEAM-based learning

Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong is a school that seems to have the best of both worlds.

On the one hand, it is part of an impressive international group with a strong educational history and a wide-reaching network. On the other, it is afforded a liberating amount of autonomy to construct an education tailored specifically to children growing up in Hong Kong. 

Despite running over 60 schools around the world, there is no cookie cutter approach from the powers-that-be at Nord Anglia Education headquarters, no requirement that the staff teach a predetermined syllabus or that the extracurricular activities conform to a list.

Instead, the Principal, Brian Cooklin, has been given free rein to develop the right kind of school for Hong Kong.

In practical terms, this manifests itself in areas such as the curriculum. In the early years, the school follows the British Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). However, rather than teaching the Tudors and Stuarts as would be done in the UK, the children learn about the history of the Silk Road. Once classes are over, there are 120 extra-curricular activities (ECAs), run by staff for free. The topics and themes of these are as broad as they are varied.

“Every member of staff voluntarily runs one extracurricular activity,” says Cooklin. “I told them that they can choose anything the like. I don’t mind what, they just have to have enthusiasm for it.”  

Peer-assisted learning

Cooklin also decided to install a house system that runs across the three campuses. This was done primarily for the pastoral care benefits and peer-assisted learning that it encourages.

“The children get into the habit of working with each other across year groups. They collaborate. Year 9 are currently choosing their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) subjects and we find they go to the Year 10s in their house to ask for their advice.” The house system also shows its strength when the children transfer from one of the two pre-school campuses to the larger Lam Tin campus.

Ruth Hanson, head of school at the Tai Tam pre-school, says, “We are three campuses but it is one school. When transitioning from one to the other, it’s important that the children feel secure and we find that comes from the house system and knowing that they are already part of a whole school.” 

Whilst Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong reaps the benefits of being able to dictate its own path, there are also significant upsides to being part of a larger, global network. An example? Each school within the Nord Anglia family profits from the associations that have been established with the Juilliard School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  

Juilliard is a New York-based school of performing arts, which has spent the last hundred years providing world-class teaching in music, dance and drama. The unique collaboration with Nord Anglia Education is multifaceted. From a broad perspective, the Juilliard professionals train the NA staff to be able to deliver an enriched curriculum, far beyond the standards of a typical school. The performing art syllabus has also been developed under their guidance and each of the three performing arts is taught separately by specialised teachers, from preschool upwards, rather than grouped together as a general subject. 

Additionally, throughout the year Juilliard artists and alumni will visit the Nord Anglia schools to give workshops and performances in addition to professional development classes for the teachers.  

Outside of term time, Juilliard runs the Nord Anglia Summer Performing Arts programmes in Shanghai, Geneva and Florida for students wanting to excel to the next level. 

For the pupils, this collaboration gives unprecedented access to the highest calibre of performing arts on a day-to-day basis. It is something that Cooklin views as essential to a well-rounded education, both academically and socially. “I think those subject do something special for a child’s confidence. I think they’re transformational and that spills over into other things,” he says. 

Leading the way in STEAM education

Ensuring that the pupils’ creative and academic skills are evenly honed, Nord Anglia’s STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics) programme is also greatly enhanced by an affiliation, this one with MIT, an establishment that obviously needs little introduction.  

At a time when schools are falling over themselves to demonstrate the excellence of their STEM curriculum, we can’t help but feel that Nord Anglia really is holding an ace here, because the association with this world leader provides its students with an extraordinary opportunity to marry their studies to real world innovation.

Read more: Best STEM and coding classes for kids in Hong Kong

One way in which this is done is with MIT setting the Nord Anglia students a challenge each term. Tasks such as these require the pupils to experiment and create, collaborate and think critically. One such challenge started with MIT posing the question, What are you curious about? What emerged from that was the group decision to look at pollution in Hong Kong. This lead to five year old pupils taking water samples from differing areas around the city and the fifteen year old pupils teaching them how to perform pH testing in the science labs. 

“What I love about the challenges is that everybody is involved across the age groups,” says Cooklin. 

The latest MIT challenge was centred on superheroes and this January, the Hong Kong school hosted the Nord Anglia schools in China for a STEAM festival, Comic-Con. The real feather in their cap though is the opportunity each spring for senior pupils and staff to travel to the US to experience MIT in action. Together with the Nord Anglia schools globally, they meet with professors and tour the world-renowned facilities, taking part in group challenges. En route, they also swing past Harvard to see a little of what student life there is like. 

Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong has succeeded in striking just the right balance – the balance of being part of a bigger, global establishment while still being the master of its own destiny. Both internationally and day to day, there is tremendous opportunity here.