Is there anyone who has had personal experience with Harrows either in the capacity of student, parent, or staff member?
I’m interested in learning more about the school and its culture, in particular:
-Extracurriculars available
-Leadership and volunteer opportunities
-Academic structure (curriculum / how are classes categorised/streamed
-School tradition and culture
-Social aspect / inclusivity
-Facilities
-Anything else applicable/useful
What are the best parts about attending Harrows? In addition, what are some of the weaknesses (if any).
What are some of the reasons that I’d choose Harrows over other top Bangkok International schools?
I am a first-year university student who graduated from Harrows in 2016. Harrows is a medium sized school with around 120 students per year, and a majority (around 90%) are Thai. Most kids speak in Thai, but school tries to enforce English speaking at school (doesn’t work well) There’s a huge turnover of students as a lot of transfer to other schools. It’s a very easy school to get in if you have the money.
Harrows attract a lot of wealthy students who are highly pampered by their families. Parents are very involved and political, and although when we want to launch projects and build something new, there’s always sponsors, certain kids get preferential treatment because of parent involvement. Parents interfere in school decisions on who gets awards and leadership positions.
Your academic experience at Harrows highly depends on which group you are placed in. Top kids get a lot of attention and average kids not so much. A lot of teachers are leaving the school for overseas and there was a lot of new relatively inexperienced teachers when I was there. There was a lack of quality system in control of controlling teaching quality and they like to rotate good and bad teachers around. Harrow kids are generally less motivated, and many are Thai and quite complacent. It’'s very relaxed and flexible (in a bad way), and there’s always an easy short cut path to do things if you ask teachers. I would say that it really does fail to keep up with other top schools in Bangkok academically.
I would not recommend Harrows if you want to be in an environment that allows you to flourish as a student, and from the number of students who transfer to other schools, I would recommend other nearby schools like NIST, ISB, or BPS.