International School of Beijing versus the Western Academy of Beijing.

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marke123 Member

Member since 12 October 2023

marke123Member13 October 2023 12:23:25

Hello,

I am moving to Beijing and looking into international schools for my child who will be starting high school. The ones that caught my attention immediately were the International School of Beijing and the Western Academy of Beijing. I did some research on both schools, but am looking for personal input as well to get more information.

Some questions I have are:

Which school has more international students? I have heard different things from different people, including that there is a 9:1 native-to-international student ratio at WAB
Which school has better teachers, apparently ISB has teachers who are more formal compared to WAB.
Which campus is better? I looked at campus maps for both schools and noticed that even though WAB's seems more artistic, ISB's is more modern and large
How many people does each school have? I only found information from several years ago that may be outdated.
Which school has better athletics? My child loves to play sports, especially basketball, and we are looking for a strong athletic program.

I think that's about it for questions, but any other information would also be extremely helpful.

Thank you!

Frann3328 Member

Member since 15 October 2023

Frann3328Member15 October 2023 16:56:15

Hi, I hope you find more info about this. I would like to learn more on the topic myself, if anyone has experience.

fala1228 New member

Member since 12 September 2016

fala1228New member16 October 2023 08:45:41

@marke123

My son used to attend BeiJing city international school. It's inside the city and my son had very good teachers when he was there.

yoshi1299 Member

Member since 23 October 2023

yoshi1299Member27 October 2023 12:16:08

@fala1228

nice

BeijingBob Active member

Member since 09 August 2020

BeijingBobActive member31 October 2023 14:35:49

My son has long since graduated HS But I remember we had applied to WAB but had been waitlisted as they were no spaces available at the time We applied to Dulwich as well but we didn’t like the way the school felt when we went in. Then even though my son is American, we applied to the British school of Beijing BSB and found it extremely welcoming and friendly We did not apply for ISB because everything we heard was that they were much closer in the way they schooled kids to the Chinese system. We heard that they overloaded the kids with homework and that’s exactly why we didn’t enroll our kid in a local school. We watched him suffer from third grade to year seven in local schools and couldn’t in good conscience have him go to a Chinese high school or one that would be run anything similar to one which is what we felt ISB was going to be

we enrolled our son in BSB and had no regrets after year 11 when most British kids would start doing A-levels BSB changed to the IB program after graduation, my son opted to do university in the UK he has since graduated and is quite happy

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