Below please find the text of a letter sent yesterday to all families by the Chair of the ABIS Board regarding expansion plans…
Dear parents,
We are very happy to announce that, after an extended period of discussion and planning, Sohar Aluminium and Orpic have just signed a Memorandum of Understanding designed to assist the school in developing world class facilities, enable expansion to take place and secure the school’s position as a leading school in the region over the long term. Whilst this is only the first step in the process of the two companies’ actions in this regard, it is, nevertheless, an important and exciting one.
Let me outline the key elements of plans under consideration at this time.
The mission to meet the specific needs of the Sohar expatriate community, specifically, providing world class International Baccalaureate education designed for expatriate children living a mobile international lifestyle, has been a core goal of the school from its inception and will remain so. As part of Orpic’s large scale expansion of its Sohar operations they will be bringing in large numbers of expatriate employees here, and are relying on ABIS to provide quality programmes that will allow them to attract, and keep, key people.
Added to this, over the last three years there has been a growing demand from Omani parents wishing to send students to our school to the point where, right now, there are more Omani children on the waiting list than at school! So, as well as extending the expatriate section, we are also planning to build another section designed to allow for a larger number of, initially K – Grade 5, Omani students. Both Sohar Aluminium and Orpic are keen to encourage their Omani employees to consider the school as a positive option. Additionally, Orpic will be sponsoring an exciting scholarship programme to allow the very brightest and most motivated students from the Al Batinah region to attend the school. Of course, if these plans do come to fruition, our existing Omani students would have the choice of which section they wished to attend.
All the students at ABIS will share the benefits of vastly improved facilities and a larger number of specialist services in a really exciting and innovative development plan. These facilities will include international standard sports facilities (running track, soccer pitch etc), science (labs) and arts facilities (outdoor and indoor theatre spaces, music and art studios) as well as other state of the art learning spaces.
Growth and change is always challenging and sometimes unsettling but our highest priority is to ensure that the school maintains its not-for-profit focus, and has the facilities and resources required to meet the needs of (quickly) growing children.
As we move forwards, Neil and his team will share more information with you. But for now, I hope you will understand that until everything is fixed we will not be able to go into too much detail as those details may still change!
Kind regards
Jerry Van Alphen
Chair of the Board