We have had three children in school in Thailand, with ages ranging from 4 to 11, since 2000, and we have encountered both joy and tribulations, laughter, tears and some frankly astonishing variations in both the quality and standards of education and the degree of professionalism and honesty in teaching staff and administrators. Our kids have been taught by some really outstanding teachers over the years. They have also suffered abuse, trauma, abjest confusion and terror under some unbelievably brutal, cynical and uncaring educators at Nantawan Trilingual school (so not an true international school, despite having had an British headmaster for six months until December 12, 2008, a British head of early years, various native English-speaking, Thai, Chinese and Filipino teachers) that we enrolled two of our sons at (because we could no longer afford the ever-increasing fees of the excellent international school they were previously attending (Bromsgrove). We are currently suing this school for the return of the bulk of THB250,000 (about US$7,500/GBP5,000) they took from us up-front to enroll two of our children. After physical beatings by Thai, Filipino and Chinese teachers, religious proselytizing in the classroom (a Filipina teacher expounding on her belief that "God made everything" in a science class), the demotion of our three-year old to a class of two-year olds because he was "behind" the other students in his age group (after one-year at an Internaiotnal school!), all in the first two weeks, we realised we might have been lured into making a tragic mistake. After 6 weeks, we removed our children permanently when our son was accused of hitting another child deliberately, (he denies it was deliberate, and the school has subsequently admitted that no one had actually seen the incident), and was then taken by a teacher for a confrontation with the child's furious (Thai) parents, who threatened to have him arrested and put in prison (the mother) and kicked (the father). The school didn’t actually tell us this: they instead called us up and told us they wanted to suspend him for two days. In the end, he was kept in the head of early year’s office for two days. We only found out from our son about the confrontation with the other child's parents when he arrived at home terrified and expecting to be arrested and kicked at any moment. He had turned 7 years old a few days earlier. We attended a a meeting with the some of the faculty, including the headmaster, Andrew Elliott, and the head of early years, Daniel Maxwell and voiced our concerns and dismay at the appalling ongoing treatment and abuse being meted out to our kids, and the negative effects these were having on their tender personalities and characters. The following day, we were told our phone calls would ne longer be accepted, and that we were banned from entering the premises. A srtream of increasingly abusive insulting and cynical emails followed from Andrew Elliott.
The school denies none of the facts stated above, never has, although they conveniently missed out any mention at all of the (illegal under Thai law) physical abuse meted out by Thai and Filipino and Chinese teachers on our and other children in their 51-page (!) "report", which exonerated all the teachers utterly while passing the entire blame for all the incidents (except of course the unmentioned physical abuse that had already been "apologized" for in previous email correspondence between the Andrew Elliott -who mysteriously resigned - or was he fired? - at the same time as the report was issued) and blamed us, the parents, and the children for creating the "problems" in the first place. Nantawan has refused to refund ANY of our money, even the 4 months of unused, pre-paid bus fares and meals. banned us from the premises, refused to accept our phone calls and informed us that they had requested and been assured of police assistance should we attempt to enter the school premises as we were trying to "extort" money from the school.
This may be an extreme example of the pitfalls of enrolling you children in a school in Thailand, but unfortunately for our family it has been a truly traumatic reality that we are still trying to deal with. Based on our experience, we cannot recommend placing foreign children in anything other accredited International Schools with well-qualified and adequately recompensed teaching staff. Nantawan Trilingual School does not fall into any of these categories.
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