Garden International School

Kuantan campus

GIS Kuantan, established in 1992, located at Taman Pantai Chempedak

The curriculum is divided into several major stages:

1. The Nursery and Reception 2. Key stage 1 (Year 1 to 2) 3. Key stage 2 (Year 3 to 6) 4. Key stage 3 (Year 7 to 9) 5. Upper secondary (Year 10-11) 6. Sixth Form (Year 12-13)

Staff

The Principal of Garden International School is Mr Mark Ford, the Head of Secondary is Dr. Nicola Mason, the Head of Primary is Mr Colter Watt. The Head of GIS Kuantan is Mrs. Tiffany Lacey-Edwards.

The school employs over 80% of expatriate teachers, mostly originating from Britain and Australia. In addition to the large teaching staff, the school employs administrative staff, counsellors and student service staff to attend to the needs of the students.

Curriculum

The school follows University of Cambridge International Examinations based curriculum for upper years, with students sitting IGCSE after two years of study in Year 10 and 11; and sixth form sitting A-Level exams after 2 years of study in years 12 and 13. In recent years, some subjects have chosen to take Edexcel in place of CIE, such as GCSE PE.

The following subjects are available for IGCSEs in GIS:

Science, English (Language&Literature) are compulsory subjects along with Mathematics.

A-Levels

Houses

There are four houses in GIS – Chancellor, Sultan, Queen and Crest. Each house has a colour – Chancellor is Green, Sultan is Red, Queen is Blue and Crest is Yellow They also have certain mascots. The Chancellor mascot is a tortoise, the Crest one is a tiger, the Sultan an orangutan and the Queen the elephant.You can tell if someone is in a certain house because they will be wearing a corresponding T-shirt. There are competitions between the four houses, and there are two main sports events that showcase the strong rivalries. Over the years, Sultan has been the dominant team but after 4 years it seems that Chancellor is a close second place. They participate in Sports Day and the Swimming Gala. Along with these two, there are other competitions between the houses, such as the weekly Interhouse and the weekly merits competition. New students will be allocated in a random house. But if new students have a sibling whom joined first, they will, most of the time, be in the same house as their sibling(s).

Sports

Garden International School has a proud sporting tradition. Representative teams come under the banner of Dragons. Dragons sports include: Football, basketball, swimming, rugby, touch rugby, cross country, netball, athletics, t-ball, tennis, golf, badminton and triathlon. Dragons age groups range from Under 9 to Under 18 with over 60 teams. The 2013/14 season has Dragons teams attending a total of 50 local and international weekend tournaments.

The school is a key member of ISAC, participating in weekly league fixtures and hosting weekend tournaments in Kuala Lumpur. As a member of SEASAC, Dragons senior teams attend tournaments in Singapore, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Bangkok, participating in a wide range of sports. In 2014, Garden International School hosted the Under 18 SEASAC Football competition which is the pinnacle SEASAC due to nature of the sport. The school is also in the FOBISIA ‘A’ League, competing in the Primary (Years 4–6), U13 & U15 FOBISIA competitions annually. These are 3 day multi-sport events.

Dragons teams are also supplemented by the GISKL Sports Academy (open to all) held after CCA time and on weekends. These are sessions run by external qualified coaches and cover sports such as golf, football, tennis, swimming, netball, badminton and martial arts.

School calendar

Garden International School begins the academic year in the beginning of September, although in 2009 it was set to begin at the end of August. There are three terms, and with each term there is a mid-term break of 1–2 weeks. These usually coincide with holidays such as Hari Raya Aidil Fitri (Eid ul-Fitr) and Deepavali in the first term, Chinese New Year in the second term and in the third term it does not coincide with any holiday.

The full-length term breaks sometimes coincide with holidays such as Christmas in the first term, Easter in the second term, and at the end of the third term, the academic year ends Summer. Christmas and Easter holidays are usually about 2–3 weeks. Summer, however is usually 6–7 weeks, beginning in mid-July and ending at the end of August or beginning of September. Sometimes school does not begin on a Monday, if there is a public holiday on 31 August, Hari Merdeka or Independence Day for Malaysia.

Examination period usually occurs in May and June, usually taking up one week for lower secondary school (Years 7–9) and two weeks for upper secondary school (Years 10–13).