Profile: Jay and Sri Young and their two children (Ruben and Chloe)
Originally from: England, UK and Java, Indonesia
Arrived in Bali: 2016
What made you decide to move to Bali?
A combination of family and destiny calling!
You own the Skywalker House Academy; in Desa Buwit, Tabanan Regency (15 mins drive from Echo Beach). Please share the history of the school and its philosophy.
The basic vision is to provide an authentic international standard education at a price most of us can afford. Most expats don’t realise how expensive schools in Bali can be.
Imagine, a small world-class academy, set within the beautiful natural surroundings and idyllic rice fields of a traditional rural village, just fifteen minutes drive from the world-famous family resort of Echo Beach, Canggu, Bali. A successful, growing and evolving centre of learning, created by teachers and parents for like-minded families. Delivering the National Curriculum of England, as the U.K. Department for Education prescribes.
More than a school; it is a lifelong learning community and skills ecosystem; built upon authentic learning philosophies, human relationships and international family values. All members are carefully selected for their potential to symbiotically benefit the learning community. It has incredible international-standard academic learning achievement rates (as verified by independent IXL data); averaging 1.5-grade development every 12 months.
Having developed rapidly through word-of-mouth and personal referrals, we have built our community into a shining light.
We instil a passion for education in our members and apply an array of highly effective traditional and contemporary data-driven methodologies, layered upon the principles of positive, constructive, and sustainable human relationships.
Our professional team of educators receive intense training and are themselves the beneficiaries of a personal and community growth mindset, embedded with authentic learning philosophies, and data-driven excellence; using the English national curriculum.
Our purpose-built, fully integrated, holistic, blended-learning programmes are custom-designed and tailored to the individual. All this is to help our learners reach the best versions of themselves.
Describe the school community and the expat families that attend.
The community is approximately a fifty-fifty balance between expat families and mixed Indo-international families. Most schools in Bali have a very unstable student body because they rely too heavily on short term stays which becomes a form of study tourism. We don’t accept families for any study stays for less than one year, to ensure that we build a more sustainable relationship-based learning model.
You say you are providing ‘more school choices for parents’ and a creative community of lifelong learners, global citizens, and social entrepreneurs. Please share more about this.
Lifelong learning is a philosophy for a fulfilling life well-lived. Learning is at the core of all growth and development. When we are not learning, we are essentially just dying. Our brains literally diminish and shrink if we don’t keep them utilized and fit.
Global citizen is a concept which I have had to adjust my understanding of. I am not in favour of homogenizing the world into a single global legal, cultural, or economic entity. Which is I think what some people think the concept should be about. I have come to understand that this is not desirable. However, I remain committed to the idea that there are certain values and philosophies that are indeed global. Concepts like love, health & family are universal. As someone who has lived on both sides of the globe – I feel like there are important parallels to be drawn and promoted. Life-long learning is just one.
Social entrepreneurs are the embodiment of the idea that there is more than one way to be entrepreneurial. That the main focus can be more than capital profit. It can equally be about building communities and learning legacies. And that is how I see the Skywalker community. It’s a community of lifelong learners – building something for future generations to enjoy.
What are some of the cultural and academic challenges of working in education in Bali?
There are a lot of differences to understand and reconcile in any international community. Luckily I have the benefit of having an Indonesian (Sundanese) wife and partner. Just within Java – there are many ethnic and linguistic diversities. Bali is no different. So we are always having to stay open-minded when communicating our expectations. What we might regard as ‘basic’ or common sense can be totally unknown and complicated to someone from another cultural background. Almost everything we assume to be ‘normal’ must be reconsidered and reassessed. This is a great opportunity to re-evaluate the ideas of normal itself. But it is also very resource-intensive and can feel daunting sometimes.
This takes on many forms and takes many years to fully appreciate. It is a balancing act between creating and communicating your own expectations that are informed by common values. These need to be communicated carefully and concisely – in the context of commonly understood contexts.
What advice do you have FOR FAMILIES who wish to MOVE TO Bali?
Choose wisely based on a long-term strategy. Stability in relationships is essential for children to develop. Avoid short-term thinking.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
If parents who would like to visit and arrange a trial day at the school and find out more information, please visit www.skywalkerhouse.page and the IG skywalker_montessori.
