The Guide
Wed, 24 June 2026

Cities / Johor Bahru / Sri Ara Schools

Sri Ara Schools

A long-running, family-feel Cambridge school in Straits View on a small old-bungalow site, where the draw is tiny class sizes rather than facilities.

Sri Ara Schools campus
Sri Ara Schools, Straits View. Photograph · School

Founded
1997

A long-running, family-feel Cambridge school in Straits View on a small old-bungalow site, where the draw is tiny class sizes rather than facilities.

Sri Ara opened in 1997 and runs a British-based programme leading to Cambridge IGCSE alongside a Malaysian national stream. The campus is two converted bungalows with a field, not a purpose-built site, and physical facilities are basic compared with the Iskandar Puteri schools.

What pulls families in is class size. Groups commonly run at five or six pupils, sometimes as low as ten at the top end, which suits children who need close attention or are coming in mid-syllabus from another system. Parents speak warmly about the nurturing atmosphere and dedicated teachers. Recurring complaints centre on administration: late textbooks, fee handling, and patchy responsiveness. Best suited to families prioritising individual academic support over a campus experience.


  • Sri Ara has a small but consistent positive review pool centred on small classes, warm staff and individual attention. Aggregate Google rating sits at across 32 reviews.
  • Long-stay students and parents return to the same themes: family feel, dedicated teachers and noticeable progress in confidence and English fluency.
  • The clearest negative theme is administration, not teaching. Parents flag delays in providing books and resources, inflexible deposit and fee policies, and slow email and phone response from management.
  • Pandemic-period fees are a specific complaint. Parents say Sri Ara did not adjust fees during MCO lockdown when peers in the Klang Valley did.
  • No bullying, safeguarding or principal-conduct complaints surfaced.
  • One older review notes limited extracurriculars and the absence of music classes, alongside otherwise positive comments on environment and class size.

Positives

  • Small classes and family feel. Repeated descriptions of warm community, low pupil-teacher ratio and genuine attention to individual students.
  • Teacher quality and pupil progress. Parents and former students credit teachers with confidence-building, English progress and long-term character development.

Considerations

  • Administration and fees. Specific complaints about resource delays, deposit and fee inflexibility, no adjustment during MCO, and weak email and call response from management.
  • Co-curricular breadth. One review flags absence of music classes and limited extracurricular options, though this is not echoed in the more newer reviews.

23, Jalan Straits View, Straits View, 80200 Johor Bahru, Johor Darul Ta'zim, Malaysia

School website