Headmaster's message Friday 1st September
Dear Parents and Guardians,
We have had a great start to the term and the school is feeling lively and full of action. Our improved facilities are yet again making a big difference. We have started the year celebrating another excellent set of results that are well above the UK independent school average and one of our Year 12s has received their first university offer, a huge milestone for the school as we enter our first year of offering the full British curriculum up to Year 13. We will be publishing more about these achievements on our social media channels over the coming weeks.
Our biggest challenge at the start of term has been Kids to Car. We have been quick to make changes which have led to improvement and we will be testing more changes in the coming weeks and then launching several other changes at the beginning of Term 1b. I have been spending a lot of my time on this problem and the Physicist in me enjoys the challenge. I would like to to explore some of my thinking on this.
In an ideal world, we would have a parking space for every parent, in sheltered areas that would allow you to come and collect your child easily and efficiently. Unfortunately, I don't know of any school that has this luxury. It is important to consider 'stocks' and 'flows' in solving this problem. Our stock, in the number of cars the campus can hold. On Thursday 29th August at 3.16pm, we had 250 cars enter the campus and only 2 leave. This tells us that our campus can probably hold 250-300 cars comfortably without reaching gridlock. Flow, is the rate of cars in and out of the campus. We tend to find that 10 minutes after the pick-up time, flow becomes an issue. This is caused by parents being unable to leave the pick-up point due to double parking, traffic being stopped when parents reverse out of parking spaces and clearance of traffic on the the Ratchapruek road.
Over the coming weeks, we will be experimenting with changing the balance of stocks (parking) and flows. It is a delicate balance. For example, if we reduced pick-up spots to one lane, this would improve flow by making it easier for cars to leave but could reduce the number of cars the campus could hold (we estimate between 150-200). If we exceed this number, we would reach gridlock and have to divert cars off campus.
For now, there are some simple things that parents can do to improve the system:
- If you arrive at the pick-up in your car, stay in your car
- Arrive at 3.15 for pick-up 1 and 4.25 for pick-up 2. Arriving before this time disrupts flow as the children are not ready to be picked up
- Leave the pick-up area as soon as you have picked up your child
- Drive slowly and carefully on campus. We have had some complaints already about parents speeding
