Victoria Shanghai Academy Reviews (38)
Average Ratings
Reviewer Nationalities
How would you rate Victoria Shanghai Academy?
Good teachers and really good lessons
A great school with nice teachers! :)
Kids are so nice teacher so nice best school ever no bullies exellent
Victoria Shanghai Academy is an excellent school that offers high-quality education and helps children learn in a fun and happy way. Walking into VSA is like walking into a land of happiness. Hope VSA can improve and become better and strive for excellence.
I'm a recent alumni of VSA and find the accusations made below very false. I have heard it has become a 'cool trend' among some students to write negatively about your school, but I hope this won't give discourage prospective students to come study at VSA and get a good education here. Especially those who are looking for a good bilingual school with great teachers who really cares about your well-being. Yeah, perhaps in every school there are some kids who are 'mean' but this doesn't represent the whole student population and of course there are some really nice students and teachers also. In my years here I made such a close-knit group of friends. I think one of the strengths of VSA is the strong sense of community and the amount of resources there are to help you if you look for it. There's areas for improvement for sure but in my recent visit back I saw they have made a lot of changes to the facilities and also Chartwhells is upgrading their food.
READ IT OR YOU'II REGRET IT-教育的黑暗面/the dark side of education：當你付了大量的金錢，你願意讓你的孩子被剝奪接受ib考試的機會嗎？Are you willing to let your child be deprived of the opportunity to take the ib exam when you have paid a significant amount of money? 一所陰險的學校！！！THIS SCHOOL SCAMS YOUR MONEY!!!!!! If you do not reach a certain score(WHICH IS CONSIDERABLY UNATTAINABLE) they force you to take the VSA diploma which is not recognized by universities and then you realize that you pay an immense amount of school fees. That's very insidious. The school prioritizes attaining high average IB scores at the expense of students' rights to take the IB exam and have the opportunity to get into university. Moreover, this insidious strategy reveals the school's true priorities. Instead of nurturing an environment where all students have an equal chance to pursue the internationally recognized IB exam and gain access to a wide range of universities, they prioritize their reputation and average IB scores. This narrow-minded focus on statistics not only limits students' educational opportunities but also denies them the fundamental right to a fair and equal educational experience. The school also fails to acknowledge that students do not have enough sleep due to stress and mental health issues and excessive workload. This demonstrates the lack of consideration for practicality and student needs. They do not allow students to take the lift after 8:25 which is unreasonable as classes start at 8:30. I strongly advise parents to not put their kids in VSA as the IB is an extremely demanding program and they exploit you for financial gain. DO NOT ENROL YOUR KIDS IN VSA!!!!!! EVERY CHILD DESERVES AN OPPORTUNITY AT A SPOT IN UNIVERSITY WHETHER THEY ARE ACADEMICALLY STRONG OR BAD. YOUR CHILD DESERVES AN EDUCATION WHERE THE SCHOOL VALUES YOUR CHILD'S WELL-BEING, GROWTH, AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. I URGE YOU TO NOT ENROL YOUR KIDS INTO VSA FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR CHILD'S BRIGHTER FUTURE. CHOOSE A SCHOOL WHERE THEY PRIORITIZE YOUR KIDS' HAPPINESS OVER GRADES.
VSA is a toxic school. School Staff ignores and embraces bullying. They just want the money, their solutions wouldn’t solve the root problem. Walk away from the bully? Really?! Do our parents pay so much for this? Failed school. Been here for 10 years + and after I graduate I’ll flee this place. VSA stands for Violence Suppression Association!
The lunch is absolutely atrocious and overpriced, and it is extremely unhygienic and disgusting, the teachers are very horrible and some teachers are exceedingly rude.
VSA is a good school with a variety of teachers and facilities. These teachers are very wise and insightful.
The environment is absolutely atrocious
Study here please, it will guide you across your entire life trust me.
I have to say though, VSA is a nice school and it's filled with a lot of nice teachers but the reason why I rated a 3 instead of 5 is because: 1. Some teachers have the balls to understand the student's situation(they understand more when they have kids) such as anxiety and when they get bad grades, they do help them but some teachers don't. Back in Y9, I have a science teacher and the grades he gave others were pretty strict. I got a 5 for one of my criteria in my lab report and he rounded down to a 4 and told my parents about it. SERIOUSLY?????? 2. The school lunches were one of the worst things u can find in the school. Sure there's a lot you can by such as snacks, drinks and yogurts but all of them are way too over priced. A lunch costs $32 and it doesn't include anything and a 7cm diameter cookie costs $10. Almost every secondary student in VSA reported this problem to the student council but when the student council quote "Your voice will be heard," It's the opposite thing. Also the vending machines are broken for FIVE YEARS REEEEEEEEEAAAAAALLLYYYYYY??????? 3. When it comes to bullying, the teachers don't really care. I was once in Y3 and someone like my age kicked me in the balls 3 times because I wasn't on his side. I reported to the teacher and she said "No fighting games". I got cyber-bullied back in Y6 and almost the entire class did that to me. Again I told the teacher about the matter and they didn't care. 4. Flex in secondary is one of the most boring things in school. You get to learn about stupid relationships and puberty. Teachers usually have this form where you get to speak up what do you want to do during flex but the form is utterly futile because the teachers never agree with out statement. Overall, this is a pretty good school but when all these matters are solved I will definitely rate this a 5 star.
VSA is a school where you can learn and have fun at the same time
4.5 stars. I really liked VSA, and I wish I could give it five stars, but if I'm being honest, 4.5 stars is already a bit of a stretch. The reason: Although the school teachers were very good and nice, the students were often rude and mean. As I looked at the other reviews, I noticed quite a few people observed that unless you were in the school from kindergarten/grade 1, you would never really fit in. I agree - and although sometimes the students make an effort, you know you will never truly replace those bonds. But even aside friendship, the bullying in the school is not to be ignored. EXTREMELY cruel bullying occured to other students as I went to VSA. The one very popular girl convinced everyone else to do the same to one girl - and I'm sure it made her life terrible. All for a bad reason, which I won't state, due to privacy reasons and respecting this girl's privacy. The school teachers were very nice and taught very well, but sometimes I thought that it was TOO easy. However, it was quite light-hearted. I almost never did my homework and simply finished it on the bus because it was so simple. Also, even though VSA focused on well-being, some of the students were really cruel and made other's well-being... well, turn... bad, I guess. The well-being lessons, although very important, were very easy and I think most students just snoozed through it, and it was the perfect lesson to pass notes and whisper to friends. It wasn't really taken seriously by students. How hard would it be to make a slight improvement to that class? Now for the specialist lessons... Overall, I think that it was just fun. It didn't really teach me anything, and it was just a break from class. Maybe others would disagree with me, but from my experience, the classes were just mediocre and didn't really require any brainpower. PE was just being athletic. However, one time there was an incident in which we were required to do a Google Slides about a sport or activity we had chosen to improve upon and our progress. The PE teacher thought only one of our Google Slides was any good, and just because it was prettier than the others, and looked as though more work had been put in - although that was just because it looked nice. He shamed every one of us one by one as he went through our slides - and it was SO embarrassing. During PE lessons, if you were a slow runner or someone un-athletic, people would often roll their eyes, especially if you were in a team with some athletic people. It was embarrassing to be one of those people who just wasn't SPORTY. Drama was fun, in my opinion, there were lots of interesting projects but I didn't really learn much - or anything from it... Other than Wikipedia was not to be trusted. That's the other thing: Why is Wikipedia banned in almost every International School in HK?
I think that if people want an IB school, a good option is VSA. First of all, VSA provides a bilingual education for all students. If a student needs development for their Chinese, VSA provides extra help for those students. Teachers in VSA (especially the upper years) encourage all students to be bilingual in their work. Secondly, VSA has almost finished a $420,000,000 dollar campus expansion, which will provide good facilities for students and teachers. Also, most of the rumours about VSA are fake. While I was reading this website, I came across a very strange review - one made by Alex Zhang. There has never been any snakes in the school campus, although there are a family of wild boars nearby, they've never actually come close to any of the staff and students. Thirdly, VSA provides many great opportunities for students to have a bit of fun. For example, this year (2022), VSA offered many extra activities/challenges, like making posters for special events. There's also a daily challenge to help improve student's Chinese. The staff are friendly and helpful, although some teachers can be quite strict and mad sometimes. Usually teachers get mad because something or someone is annoying them. VSA also cares about the safety of students, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are rules about taking your mask off and talking while eating, as well as reminders to wash and sanitise your hands. However, there have been a few cases recently, but most of the people are safe. So to conclude, VSA is definitely a good IB school.
Very good and and it is big
Both my children went to VSA. My elder one couldn't wait to leave and I quickly pulled out my younger one after a year my elder one left. When my elder one left, he was so happy to leave and he is in a new school in the UK now and he told me that he had the worst time in yr6-8. Yr1-5 were like playing all the time in school and after school it was my responsible to home school him Chinese, English, Maths, etc. He didn't learn much from Y1-5 to be honest. It was seriously a wrong choice to send my children to VSA.
It's a pretty good school but some teachers are biased and get mad, other than that its a good school and every student is friendly and nice
VSA helps children grow, but not only that, they encourge them and help them reflect.
VSA is an encouaging environment that helps students grow, and even in these hard times they are doing great. I will never forget a school that help students grow and offers programs and all sorts.
This school is absolutely amazing. The teachers are super kind and I had a great time there.
Iv'e spent the past 9 years at Victoria, Personally I loved it, I made strong connections with a loads of teachers and still keep in contact with them after I left. In my opinion Vsa is as culturally Chinese of an international school as you can get. I remember walking up to Canadian International in Y5 for exhibition and not seeing a single word of mandarin on their boards, me and my friends looked at each other and were both thinking the same thing "NO WAY" compared to ours that had to be done with a half half ratio. Yes mandarin in a difficult subject to learn, me as a foreigner found it even more difficult then most of my classmates but that was normal, Vsa has a good support system for us though, In primary school I don't remember much but I never failed a single mandarin exam, the teachers gave me extra sessions when I needed it without me asking for it and even if I spoke up about it or simply had a chat with my teacher after school I knew that she would always be there to help me. In secondary starting from Y6, we were placed into 2 separate classes for mandarin, Chinese B and regular Chinese, this was by far the best decision the school has made in my opinion, All the foreigners in my grade as well as some local students who just needed extra help in the subject, the class was super interactive and definitely helped me, I looked forward to play classes every week. We had 2 teachers are regular one and and an extra one to help. My favourite part of my journey in Vsa would have had to be the Drama and Music, I was super enthusiastic about that since y1 and have always auditioned and had SO MUCH fun rehearsing and performing and it was always the highlight of my year. The thing that the school could improve on is making sure theres always a 10/10 happy environment, sometimes teachers and us students can get carried away in the work and it wouldn't be a fun place to be in.
In my last year at VSA. I was one of the head prefects. During my 5 yrs there. I think that there has been a lot of improvements. It’s a good school!
vsa is a big school with a lot of staff and students. they say it is bilingual and focuses on both chinese and english, however i totally do not agree. most students here mainly speak english, and when they speak chinese they are like foreigners speaking chinese even though they are chinese themselves. some chinese even think they are american/canadian/australian. now if you think their english is good, NO. if you come to vsa then you'll know. so, if youre looking for a bilingual school, DO NOT consider vsa. isf, sis, and cis are better. if youre looking for a mainly english school, hkis cdnis are two good ones. if youre looking for a more chinese school, i think public schools are better and stricter, unlike vsa that is too... not strict which also makes the attitudes of some become bad. now, teachers. i'll just say some are good and some are bad. one of the good ones are ms choi, she made me from a person who cant speak proper english to now a almost fluent person. mr potter, one of the "bad" teachers once shouted at a kid for not knowing how to tie his shoelaces, and compared us to his three year old kid by saying his kid can tie shoelaces, are we that dumb? they arent perfessional at all. only 1/10 were lol. learning. at fifth grade, we were learning fractions. FRACTIONS. like- do you expect students who learn fractions to be smart? by the way, were were doing excercises like shade 1/5 of the pizza... friends. if you dont come in year one or two, youll be lonely and have no friends. i only had three close friends during my four years and ended up being unfriended when i left. overall, this was just my experience. of course there are many good facts like family fun day etc, but to me its just a waste of money and you shouldnt come to vsa. please ignore my typos. yeah my english suck :)))
I went here until I was in 7th grade, and the experience is ok. Always start in Y1 though, or else you won't be able to survive the next 11 years. Always having a group of friends and people know you gives a sense of security, and it feels pretty good. Lots of clubs and choices, but teachers aren't that good. Most leave after 2 years and a lot are new. Barely any who has more than 10 years teaching experience, VSA can't keep good teachers.
Terrible university support, when I asked for some important documents, they didn't respond, leading to me losing out on a lot of options. Rarely are teachers helpful and caring enough of students. Overall, terrible. At least some of the facilities are ok.
very good school everyone should come here
Very good school! Excellent
My daughter has been with VSA since the primary and is currently at Grade 10. Over years, I have found the school operating with passion, providing a great, stable and nurturing environment for personal growth. The mode of study is lively and inspiring. VSA has handled the covid-19 crisis very well, commencing online classes shortly after the suspension of physical classes that provides continuity. I have a great respect to the Grade 10 students as I have found many of those are academically excellent, socially compassionate, and physically energetic. I would not be surprised their result in DP examination two years from now will be outstanding. I do recommend this school to all the prospect.
I was EL in my last review. I think that VSA's approach to becoming a global citizen is very Inquiry-Based, which will help us become responsible global and digital citizens: we get a lot of projects like I-time, Genius Hour and in our latest unit: social media, VSA assisted me in creating this: https://erinl409.wixsite.com/acting-for-good. VSA is a brilliant school. Some people might be too naive to thank VSA for doing so much good for them. But VSA is a school worth thanking. Victoria Shanghai Academy will always be where I learnt the most.
VSA is a wonderful school, with excellent teachers, and brilliant IB learning. Students at VSA get a lot of hands-on learning and therefore learn to be a good global citizen before students become adults.
Ms. Lin - It shouldn't come to be a surprise considering the school is situated right on the side of a mountain. Secondly, high pay but terrible environment doesn't mean good teachers will come, most new teachers are new, inexperienced teachers that has come to teach for 2~4 years (as each job contract in VSA is 2 years unless of special reasons of resignation such as forced etc.), get some more experience they can use to fill in for their resume, and leave to other schools for a even higher paying positions and with students that genuinely wants to learn. Most teachers only care about experience on their resume, however some only cares about the pay and some genuinely want to teach, and in an environment where students are uncontrollable and the lessons you teach are basically useless because none of the students care about it? Those teachers eventually give up and just let the class do whatever they want, and I have countless examples for them. School claims they are "non-profit", don't let that word deceive you, (and really, they should remove it) only a tiny fraction goes back in investing of school to make it "better", all of the others are held by the company that brought VSA, as the school board itself is hired externally and have no affiliations with the company, the company holds all the money and give the school board salaries, hence calling it "non profit"
Alex Zhang - you are joking about the boar and snakes right? How can a big school have bad teachers? I thought teachers at Victoria have good pay, hence the tuition is not cheap. Please clarify, I sent application for my boy to go here. Very strange to come across this when I was searching reviews for schools in Hong Kong. - Confused Parent
I've been in Victoria for quite some time now, here is my, personal insight of what school life feels for so long. At start, being the innocent 6 year-old you are stepping into first grade, everything seemed perfect, but as you get older, that "perfect school" doesn't seem so "perfect" after all. Victoria Shanghai Academy offers great extent of different programs that are well planned, but poorly taught and executed. Well experience teachers leave to neighbouring schools such as Canadian International or Singapore International. Many are new and in-experienced and others are mainly compromised of teachers that had taught in the middle east or Central Asia (Brunei, Indonesia, India etc). The explained new and in-experienced teachers do not have the knowledge to control classes which goes chaos at times, especially the young ones, where most of them outsmart the teacher and play games in classes nearly the entire class. Yes, they do have the qualification, but I personally think a good balance of both is what makes good teachers at a school. Facilities are Terrible - only what future parents can possibly see looks nice and high quality. Students wrote letters, asked and even begged for an improvement on school facilities such as fixing broken toilets which takes 5 months at least to get a toilet fix, broken hinges in the changing room at the swimming pool (Which in this case, it's been 3 years since students begin requesting, but never was our voices heard, most of the students believe that it is because most parent tours won't visit the changing room, but only the swimming pool, hence the school think it's "unnecessary" to fix)(Moulds are everywhere, and wild animals lurk around our school hallways, ranging from wild boars to snakes). Possible parents, I'm warning you, instead of things getting fixed to better suit students needs, they took their budget and brought huge un-necessary TVs which no one even glances at all around the school so that they can "impress future parents" on how "technologically advance" the "school and curriculum is" (After counting, roughly 2 each floor, 5/f and G/f has 3 and 1 large TV perspectively, all it displayed was outdated students work (Some where from 1-2 years ago, the time & date and some "information" on how "good the school is") Now let's point out catering... Chatwells - the catering company of VSA produces the worst food (As you can see from other reviews), food making students sick, vomiting etc, you name it, our school has it. If you're finding a school suited for your child, find it elsewhere, I promise, other schools provide better planned and executed educations than this school does for same or even the price.
Reviews from Google
Recent reviews posted on Google.
 | Rating: |
Y07T Hin Lok WAT, 2 months ago
Kids watch too much YouTube in class and even though chartwells is disgusting they still buy a lot of food from them... but then the teachers are nice except for a few....Boy on my left, girls on my right
| Rating: |
Y09J Chen Jun Walter KWONG, 5 months ago
I got a fever and a stomach ache when I ate the food, but there are nice teachers in the school, some that actually respond when I say hi.
| Rating: |
StaRFaceYT, 3 months ago
As a student of this school, there’s too many bad kids to exist in this school. Students often swear and talk about private parts in my grade, not just my grade, but people from primary as well (told by friends at school). Teachers are respectful but the food and students are the downside of this school. I’d rather move to a local school with the same education in Canada.
| Rating: |
Y4A4 Zihan (Adrian) LI, in the last week
Overall OK, but I think the food is gross. The fries are soggy, the burgers are like pork croquettes. Prefects all think they're the boss like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. Drama teacher sarcastic.
