KK opened in 2015 with an international approach to teaching English as a second language to Primary aged children (i.e. 5 to 11 years old) using the Oxford University Press materials and text books. 

When the kindergarten started in 2017, we continued with this approach whilst introducing the British Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) syllabus and some of the Montessori principles and equipment to increase our focus on early years education (i.e., nursery and kindergarten ages 2 to 7 years old) and practical life skill activities.

A 2020 external review of KKIPS’s teaching and learning highlighted the need to place greater emphasis on practical activities in ‘project-based learning, which enhances children’s thinking, creativity and problem solving and a greater emphasis on the soft skills (personal, social, emotional, communication and the arts). 

EYFS showed us that each child’s learning and development is ‘unique’ and it sets out the steps needed prior to their grasp of the ‘academics’. For example, children’s love of stories and their imitation of sounds all come before actual reading and writing. Montessori helped us to understand that learning starts from birth and that children learn at this stage, through their senses (i.e., 5 senses of the Real World), and thus, learning through ‘abstract’ concepts of letters and numbers from textbooks is outside their range of cognitive perception.

Ultimately, the child’s perception of the world is engaged through the people and environment around them – from birth. From the beginning, a child learns to speak and communicate, and learns about social relationships and behaviours in the home before they go to nursery or school. Hence, we recognize that the parent is the ‘first teacher’ of their child and the home is their ‘first school’. 

In September 2022, a further consultancy was undertaken to improve our approach to teaching English and other core subjects to move our curriculum to ‘international standards’, which extends into our new KK International Primary School. We employed specialist English teachers in Nursery and all kindergarten classes using Jolly Phonics and Cambridge textbooks. These initiatives, combined with our project- based learning, and teaching of life skills and 21st century soft skills show we have taken the best features of the progressive schools to provide an integrative educa- tion model, as shown in figure below.