*New and out now! The Spring 2023 edition of Think Global People magazine*

The expatriate exodus from Hong Kong to other countries in the region, particularly – as Relocate Global has reported – Singapore, has created lengthy waiting lists at the city-state’s best international schools.Fortunately, globally mobile and dual-career families based in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and elsewhere in the thriving south-east Asia region have several world-class international boarding and day-school options within daily, weekly and termly commuting distance.Chief among them is Epsom College in Malaysia – the sister school to equally top-performing Epsom College in Surrey, which is the current UK ‘Independent School of the Year’ and in the top 1% of UK league tables.

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Related reading from Relocate Global

• More from the Spring International Education and Schools' Fair
• UK joins 'dynamic' Pacific Rim trade group
• Malaysia: a vibrant setting for a world-class education

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A balanced curriculum based on excellence

Epsom College in Malaysia’s ‘Future Ready’ curriculum is built on the tenets of 200 years of British tradition and academic excellence, applied in a truly global context. It is also establishing itself as sporting centre of excellence, recognising the importance of sports for developing values like the merit of hard work, teamwork, risk-taking, sportsmanship and leadership.Epsom College in Malaysia’s state-of-the-art sports facilities include a multipurpose indoor sports centre, a FIFA-standard 4G Astroturf Football Pitch, a newly-built tennis ITF-compliant complex, which is home to Epsom College in Malaysia’s Mouratoglou Tennis Programme, founded by Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams’ full-time tennis coach. The Programme is a seamless blend of academics and tennis.It is one of Epsom’s many world-class sports initiatives that recognise athletic ability can be a differentiating factor in university and college applications. Epsom College in Malaysia is also launching its ECM Golf Academy, including a 5-acre on-site training facility with a driving range. Head Coach, Travis Van Dijk, has over 17 years of experience developing elite junior players, including 15 youth players in Malaysia who were granted golf scholarships at universities in the United States. The school’s reputation for football is also fast-developing, with its football academy in partnership with La Liga – Spain’s top professional football league. La Liga coaches live on-site to enhance the collegiate living-learning experience and community feel.

Bilingual English-Mandarin approach in Early Years and Primary

From Epsom College in Malaysia’s exceptional modern 50-acre campus (soon to be 80 acres), just 15 minutes from Kuala Lumpur Airport and an hour from the city centre, local students and those representing 22 different countries – including Japan, China, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and the UK – are benefiting from these world-leading sports facilities and education based on the British national curriculum (A levels, iGCSE and GCSEs).Highlighting Epsom College in Malaysia’s regional, local and global credentials, it has adopted the Singapore Maths Learning Strategy. It also has a pioneering bilingual English-Mandarin Early-Years and Primary programme.Kate Carden-Brown, director of admissions and head of higher education at Epsom College in Malaysia, explains how this immersive approach to language-learning in its prep school works to Fiona Murchie in the newest edition to our International Education & Schools Fair webinar series.“Our approach for younger children is based on the British curriculum,” says Kate Carden-Brown. “The only difference is the English-Mandarin immersion programme. Students who join us from three up to seven years old come into this programme where they study the British national curriculum bilingually. One day they study all the topics in lessons in Mandarin with the Mandarin teaching team. The next day they will study curriculum subjects in English with the English teaching team. There is no repetition, but what happens is the students associate the language with the teachers.“By the time students are ready to transition from Epsom College in Malaysia’s prep school to our secondary school, students who started the programme at the beginning will be fully bilingual.”

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Watch the webinar and find out more about Epsom School in Malaysia and others here.

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Preparing students for life

As well as focusing on offering every student the best start in their academic life in a richly diverse and tolerant student body representing all linguistic and cultural backgrounds, Epsom College in Malaysia encourages all its students to ‘think big’ within the context of the school's values of compassion, empathy, selflessness, kindness, responsibility and humility, and to experience all that the school has to offer; from elite sports facilities in tennis, golf and football, to science and the creative arts, so when it comes to making university and career choices, students are in the best possible position.“We help students to identify their passions as early as possible and to pursue and develop them,” says Kate Carden-Brown. “We give students lots of opportunities to take their learning outside of the classroom so that they can really shine, learn for themselves and be in a position to bring in new knowledge that they haven't necessarily been taught by somebody else and build a really strong personal statement for the next stage of the education at university.”This might be through independent research projects in the thriving and extensive extra- and super-curricular programme that includes debating (including in Mandarin), robotics, citizenship, Formula 1, business and economics, Model United Nations, music and the arts.Mentoring and opportunities for internships and job shadowing through Epsom College in Malaysia’s wider business network covering fintech, law, medicine, hospitality and aviation, also help students build a clear vision of what they want to achieve in life and the self-awareness, skills and resilience to achieve it.

An outstanding, person-centred, all-round international education

“It's really important to us we get to know our students as individuals,” says Kate Carden-Brown, whether students board weekly, termly or are day pupils. “We build really strong relationships with them and are excellent role models to them.” Through its leadership, pastoral and teaching teams, Epsom College in Malaysia creates a safe, solutions-focused environment that builds relationships and supports every student’s all-round personal and emotional development.Post-18, students from Epsom College in Malaysia go on to study all over the world, with the majority going to the UK, Canada or America. “We also have students who study in other places, for example Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan,” says Kate Carden-Brown.“Our slogan – which you see on the walls around school – is that we ‘nurture, educate and inspire’,” concludes Kate Carden-Brown. “We really want to nurture young people in our care and obviously we want to educate them too, but in a broad sense that is not just limited to academics. We encourage and support our young people to be educated, to be thinkers, to be reflective, and to be inspired and to enjoy their learning.”

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Read more about Epsom College in Malaysia:Raising Future-Ready Young AdultsFuture Ready Education for Future Success

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