NLCS boasts exceptional facilities

Students will be able to look up textbooks, class materials with iPads

By Yun Suh-young

JEJU ― North London Collegiate School (NLCS), a British private international school to open on this resort island later this month, showed off its campus for the first time to the press Monday.

The school, due to open on Sept. 26, is finishing up the construction of its interior and is undergoing furnishing. The school will hold an opening ceremony on Sept. 30.

Boasting top notch facilities, the newly-built campus has its buildings stretched out over 100,000 square meters of land with seven dormitories; five of which will be used starting this year.

The first facility noticeable when entering the main building of the campus is the library. The library stores about 500,000 books and is a three-story facility.

Next to the building are classrooms for boys and girls separated as middle school, upper school and sixth form school. Classes are conducted separately from grade seven up.

The school’s sports center next to the main building has a 25 meter-long swimming pool with five lanes, a fitness center, a dance studio, a 4,300 meter-squared gym that can be divided into two gyms with a curtain for separate classes.

“This gym has the nicest sound proofing I’ve ever seen in a sports hall,” said Peter Daly, the school’s principal. “Our sports center will be open for community use during the vacation period starting next year.”

The cafeteria next to the sports hall can accommodate up to 500 students at a time and a medical center next to it has a nurse residing for 24 hours in case of an emergency.

The dormitories are two-bedded with desks for each student and have a view looking out toward the school’s central square. The brightly sunlit rooms had large windows.

“These rooms are bigger than the ones in London,” said Nicholas Hewlett, vice principal of the boys school.

Pointing to an electronic door security system, he said, “These are the security devices. They can’t come in if they don’t have a card.”

Staff who attended a Q&A session after the site tour agreed that the campus’ facility was better than any other of its kind.

“The facility is exceptional. I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years of education,” said Keith Yi, vice principal of the junior school.

“The facilities are better than the one in London,” said another vice principal, Carol Thompson, in charge of the girls school.

Other than the facilities, the school also boasts of unique educational policies such as iPad use.

“All students entering the school will be given an iPad to use during classes,” the principal said. “The school will be entirely computerized. Students will be able to look up books and class materials with the iPad during classes.”

Another program unique to the school is the Community Action Service (CAS) which upper grade students will mandatorily participate in. They will present music and drama performances to community members.