Our child attended ISA Tianhe for one year. During that year it became clear that this school had serious problems, from the teachers all the way to senior management, passing by the quality of the facilities, poor hygiene and staff incompetence. Our child’s teacher publicly humiliated them for something they didn’t do in front of a canteen full of children and teachers and tried to prevent them from joining a school trip. The headteacher then tried to cover up the whole affair, making thinly veiled threats with a police record for an eight year old child when we met with her. It would be laughable, if it wasn't so serious. We have ended up making a formal complaint against them to the Bureau of Education and after that, we met with a school representative who apologised for their misconduct, including in writing, and offered a refund. We have evidence for this.
They also use your child’s image without your consent (in our case, they acquired images of our child even before they formally started at the school, during the previous Summer school, which is open to any child, not just ISA pupils). When we requested to them to remove the images from their website, social media and other unauthorised uses, the head threatened to exclude our child from virtually any and every activity. We had to consult with a solicitor and tell them we reserved our right to take them to court for them to finally remove the pictures, after months of requesting this.
The head’s husband works at the school and persistently bullies and taunts children for things like mask wearing, besides spending some of his “on duty” supervising lunch time telling inappropriate jokes to children.
The quality and condition of the facilities are quite poor. The buildings are old. There is hardly any outdoor space for the children to play, except at the field, which is around a 5 minute hike from the main building (plus queueing both ways, which eats into a large part of break time). There is no sheltered space, so on rainy days the children remain indoors. The classrooms have little natural light and feel oppressive. The warehouse where they organise events has a leaking roof. Toilets near the outdoor buildings (away from the main building) are in poor condition (including faulty lighting and a leaking handbasin) and have poor hygiene.
Our child also relayed that a cockroach was present in the canteen area, which is open to the kitchen.
The school sits in an area that is particularly mosquito infested (this is the worse area I have personally experienced in Guangzhou), with our child constantly covered in bites, even when 50% DEET was applied, which is a concern when there are outbreaks of dengue in the city as there was this year.