More than 100 children from Singapore travel to Johor daily to go to school in Malaysia’s new education hub, Iskandar Educity.

They include Singaporeans as well as children of expatriates based in Singapore.

Some families have also moved to Johor so the children can be closer to school, and the parents commute to Singapore for work.

The education center in the Nusajaya township, just across the Second Link in Tuas, has a cluster of schools of various levels, from pre-school to university.

Three have Singapore operators ― the Management Development Institute of Singapore, Raffles University Iskandar and Raffles American School.

Others include Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia, the Netherlands Maritime Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton.

Marlborough College Malaysia, which opened two weeks ago, is a branch of Britain’s well-known Marlborough College, which counts Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, among its alumni.

Principal Robert Pick said half of its 350 students aged between four and 15 commute daily from Singapore. He declined to give the breakdown, but said expatriates outnumbered Singaporeans.

The children are picked up by a fleet of buses from their homes in Singapore from 7 a.m. to make the commute to Malaysia via the Second Link.

They are “fast-tracked” across the border using a Malaysian Automated Clearance System pass that does not require their passports to be stamped, and the children do not have to get off the buses.

The journey takes about 40 to 50 minutes on a good day and over an hour if there is heavy traffic.

The school declined to give contacts of Singaporean parents, and those approached by The Sunday Times did not want to be interviewed.

But one British expatriate who commutes daily with her three children is Joanna Ackerly, an events manager at the college. She drives her three children aged six, eight and 10 from their home in central Singapore to Johor and back every day.

She said she was attracted to Marlborough’s small class size of 18 pupils, academic reputation and holistic philosophy, as well as its sprawling campus.

The long twice-a-day commutes were better than she expected, she said.

To save on travelling time, some parents have moved to Johor.

By Jane Ng

(The Straits Times)