Carrie Bennett is the High School Associate Principal for Academics at Hong Kong International School. After decades of working internationally in Bangladesh, Kuwait, and Japan with curricula in various settings and roles, she finds HKIS’s American-style curriculum refreshing in how it is rooted in choice and not fear.
In a community of over 3,000 students representing 45 nationalities, including more than 800 high school students, students are empowered to learn, explore their interests, and apply new knowledge to new contexts.
“What I’ve appreciated about an American-style education is the level of critical thinking and transfer that we teach students,” Bennett says. “It’s not about simply going into a classroom, memorising content, and then regurgitating the information.”
Instead of being limited to a set number of core subjects, the Advanced Placement (AP) subjects allow students to go broad in their choices. AP courses are college-level and ideal for high school students with a high level of motivation and a deep passion for learning.
At HKIS, students can choose from 25 AP courses currently being offered, spanning the humanities and mathematics to the sciences and world languages. They can get creative through the performing arts and art and design, or enhance their well-being through physical education, health, counselling seminars, and spiritual explorations. “They can double up in math, they could double in science,” Bennett says. “They could take a lot of humanities courses.”
The High School at HKIS leads by choice, inquiry, and access. Source: Hong Kong International School
Giving students choice in their academic portfolio is something HKIS values.
According to the US Department of Education, 75% of students in personalised learning settings feel more motivated to learn — a stark difference to traditional classrooms where only 30% of students are engaged. HKIS understands this fully, which is why they’ve designed the flexible studies programme.
In this programme, students can choose to engage with non-traditional learning experiences. They can take classes through the Global Online Academy, and become a teaching assistant to help other students in their courses.
If a student is eager to immerse in the real world, they can opt to attend school on alternate days — spending the on days at class, and off days at an internship. Through this opportunity, HKIS has seen aspiring teachers become teaching assistants in the lower primary classrooms, national student-athletes using the off days to train with coaches, and cinephiles finding their vision in film internships.
HKIS’s state-of-the-art facilities include eight science classrooms, three music classrooms, a fashion studio, a gymnasium, and more. Source: Hong Kong International School
When learning is made as holistic and exciting as that — with a support system of teachers, counsellors, and mentors guiding you at every step — it’s no surprise that HKIS students grow confident and independent. In a survey conducted in Stanford University’s Challenge Success programme, 76% of high school students reported feeling worried about the possibility of not performing well in school. It stems from the fear of failure, the constant need to increase or maintain their grade point average.
At HKIS, many of its courses have moved away from traditional cumulative final exams to more reassessment opportunities for students. This creates a learning system that allow students to make mistakes and learn from them without the pressure of one final exam. Students are assessed based on different buckets of skills that the school had identified as most important for each subject, making it easier for them to see their strengths and weaknesses.
“We look at that and go, ‘what is the trend data telling me about my learning?’” Bennett says. “We want to honour what students can do most recently and most consistently.”
This is the hallmark of an education that prepares students for a bright and thriving future. It starts in the HKIS classrooms where students take initiative, solving problems in lab experiments or independent research projects. It builds as they train to advocate for themselves. Using this roadmap to success, graduates have gone on to some of the world’s top universities: Princeton, Trinity College Dublin, Imperial College London, and more.
“Former students have told me ‘I’m just so happy that the school taught me how to advocate for my learning and what I believe in.’”
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