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THE new Riffa Views International School (RVIS) has opened its doors and welcomed its first batch of elementary students.
Dressed in light blue and beige school uniforms some younger ones were teary-eyed while others were excited at the prospect of starting school.
While students and their parents poured into the school premises, work on the secondary school and the accompanying facilities carried on.
“We had planned the school as a phased construction. Our elementary school is complete with no construction in that area but we are still putting finishing touches to the library, gymnasium, cafetorium and courtyard,” said Bruce McWilliams, director of RVIS.
At present there are a total of 84 pupils in pre-kindergarten to grade five and the numbers are expected to swell once the entire campus is completed in January next year.
RVIS management had projected an opening with 80 students and so far the response has been better than expected.
“The parents are thrilled to see the school and we have had no major problems in the first week of opening.
“There have been minor teething problems but nothing has affected classroom instruction in any way,” added Mr McWilliams.
Airy hallways and well-lit classrooms full of resource material and bright trappings are the hallmarks of this new institution.
Next month will herald the completion of two pools – one six-lane 25 metre facility and the other a kindergarten pool – the first grass field and the water feature at the front of the school. Other facilities like the science labs and tennis courts will soon follow.
“We will have a grand opening of the school in January and parents will see the state-of-the-art facilities that we have promised for their children. RVIS will be a powerhouse in the region once our entire secondary school is launched,” Mr McWilliams stated emphatically about the BD15 million project ($40 million).
After its first year of operation, RVIS plans to add a grade every year eventually taking the school up to grade 12. RVIS follows the American curriculum and will offer the American matriculation and International Baccalaureate Diploma to its students.
RVIS will have a total capacity of 560 children when completed. “At present the school has extra spaces in the existing grades but there is a strong interest as Riffa Views’ signature estates are coming close to completion. I’m sure that in a year or two we will have a waiting list for students applying to get in,” said Mr McWilliams.
“We enrolled our daughter, Sahar, four, at RVIS in January after seeing the excellent quality of faculty on its website. There are concerns about on-going construction which should have finished by now but despite all that Sahar is very happy,” said her father Hatim Dadabhai.
“My younger son is 10-months-old now and, depending on our collective experience, we will decide whether he will join RVIS or another school on the island.”
One of the major selling points of RVIS is its cutting-edge technology called the ‘thin client technology’ that is used at major corporations around the world.
“RVIS will be the first school in the Middle East to use this technology,” said Mr McWilliams, 54, who has had more than two decades of experience at American schools in Dubai and Moscow.
A team from the Netherlands is currently on the island to get the slick technology off the ground so that children can log on to their individual laptops in the classrooms to learn in a high-tech environment.
Each child from grade 1 onwards will have access to an individual laptop in their classroom. The technology, costing approximately BD1.3 million, will allow them to log on at home back to where they left their work in their classrooms. Everything will be controlled by the central server in the school.
At present there are 28 faculty members and staff on campus most of whom have been recruited from overseas. The student body comprises 50 per cent Bahraini and 50 per cent expatriates.
Some of the students and their families are new to Bahrain and some are prospective Riffa Views residents.
“We were on an accelerated-build schedule which meant that 500 workers were working at the construction site 24/7. But the school had already finished all its cement work before the cement crises hit which is why we were not delayed,” said Mr McWilliams.
RVIS has a clean slate as far as its reputation is concerned. With experienced professionals in the classrooms and at the helm of its affairs its supporters believe it will not be long before it will make a strong statement on the island. But, for now, RVIS stands tall amidst the sand and the construction equipment holding a promise of delivering a state-of-the-art learning facility for its students.
