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EtonHouse Celebrates 15 Years of Excellence in Education
April, 2010, Singapore –EtonHouse completes 15 successful years in education. Started in 1995, with its first school in the East at Broadrick Road, EtonHouse is now an international player with pre-schools and international schools in Singapore and the Asia Pacific region.
Today EtonHouse has 26 schools in 7 different countries which attract over 3000 children from 54 different nationalities. When EtonHouse started its first school in 1995, it was perceived as ‘different’, the teaching staff was international and the learning and teaching were child-responsive. It was a brand new concept in early childhood. Many were skeptical about its success.
Founder and Managing Director, Mrs. Ng Gim Choo an accountant turned housewife was at the helm of affairs. She at that time had no background in education but had a vision and a passion to create a difference in the lives of children and parents of Singapore. The first few years were not easy. There were huge costs incurred in developing the resources and infrastructure of the first school in line with international early childhood settings. Foreign talent was recruited due to the lack of qualified teachers at that time in Singapore. The business lost 1 million dollars in the first year. Parents found it difficult to understand how children learnt through ‘play’. It took many years to train teachers in this thinking and many more years to convince parents to see the benefits of this way of teaching and learning.
Today, EtonHouse has a good blend of local and international teaching staff, most with leadership, degree and masters qualifications, the parents are not just happy but recommend their friends and family to EtonHouse schools, teachers want to be a part of this unique and rewarding learning experience and most importantly the children love to go to school.
EtonHouse continues to be a front runner in the early years sector. Its centres in Orchard and Newton are the first stand alone campuses in Singapore to get the IB candidate status. It is also the first private education provider to partner with PCF to manage a child-care centre. Recently it organized the first ever Reggio Children conference in Asia with representatives from Reggio Emilia in Italy whose schools has been hailed by Newsweek as one of the best pre-schools in the world.
Mrs. Ng Gim Choo, Founder and Managing Director of EtonHouse also became the first woman
in Singapore to receive the prestigious ‘Freedom of the City of London’ in 2008.
To celebrate its 15th anniversary and make it meaningful and relevant to the education of children, EtonHouse will be focusing on sustainability through various initiatives which will be integrated within the curriculum.
EtonHouse appreciates the need to develop new kinds of education to reduce the depletion of natural resources and initiate and strengthen in children a sense of responsibility and eagerness to be a part of the process. Since the values and beliefs instilled in the early years have a long lasting impact in later life, it is important to instill concepts and practices around sustainability at an early stage in life. EtonHouse has developed a policy statement to initiative practices on economic and social sustainability. In every centre and in every classroom, children and educators follow and initiate sustainability practices as their part as a global citizen.
In the last few years, the brand has grown exponentially across the Asia Pacific region, in China where it has 8 international schools, 3 in India and 1 in Indonesia. The 15th anniversary holds a special significance in EtonHouse’s expansion to international shores. This year alone, it will open 4 new schools in Kuala Lumpur, South Korea, Tokyo and Chengdu in China. Its vision to be a high quality global educational provider has been further strengthened with its foray in these key countries in the Asia Pacific region. There are plans on the anvil to open centres in other countries in the region.
EtonHouse continues to strengthen its position as a global entity in the education sector both in Singapore and the rest of the world where it is proud to represent and enhance the uniquely Singaporean identity of a global education hub.
Contact:
Bipasha Chanda Minocha
EtonHouse International Holdings Pte. Ltd., Tel: +65-67463322, +6568463322
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