Singapore · History
How Taylor's turned an acquisition into a vertical campus landmark
Nexus International School (Singapore) began life as a takeover in 2011, grew through eight years at Ulu Pandan, and opened a purpose-built 13-storey campus in Aljunied in 2020.
The Nexus brand predates its Singapore school by four years. Taylor's Schools, the international arm of Malaysia's Taylor's Education Group, established the Nexus name in 2007 with a campus in Putrajaya. Singapore came later, and it came through acquisition.
Origins: an acquisition, not a greenfield
On 3 July 2011, Taylor's Education Group acquired Excelsior International School, an IB World School that had been operating at 201 Ulu Pandan Road since January 2007. Taylor's rebranded it immediately as Nexus International School (Singapore). The school already held IB authorisation for the Primary Years Programme and the Diploma Programme, and was an approved Cambridge International Examinations centre, so the new management inherited a functioning accreditation base and began layering in the Nexus philosophy and staffing model.
Taylor's School Division president B K Gan said at the time that the group intended to inject its best practices to position the school as the school of choice among expatriates in Singapore, as reported by The Star. The Ulu Pandan site served the school for the next eight years.
Accreditation and curriculum identity
Nexus built out its curriculum pathway progressively. The full sequence now runs IB Primary Years Programme through to Year 6, IB Middle Years Programme in Years 7 to 9, Cambridge IGCSE in Years 10 and 11, and the IB Diploma Programme in Years 12 and 13, covering learners from age 3 to 18.
In 2017 the school became a fully accredited member of the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), completing a lengthy evaluation and inspection process. CIS re-accredited the school in June 2022. The school also holds EduTrust four-year certification from Singapore's Council for Private Education, and has been designated an Apple Distinguished School in recognition of its technology integration.
The Aljunied campus
The Ulu Pandan site had become a constraint. In 2015 Taylor's Schools won a competitive bid from the Singapore government for a new site in Aljunied, beating around 40 other applicants for a narrow 57,000 square-metre plot sandwiched between the Pan Island Expressway and the Pelton Canal. The confined footprint made a horizontal layout impossible, so Broadway Malyan and local partner ONG&ONG designed a vertical solution: a 13-storey campus with junior school on the lower floors, secondary on the upper floors, and shared facilities positioned between them.
Teachers and specialist staff were brought into the design process throughout. The aquatics director specified the pool configuration; the HPE team designed the sports halls and field; the music department collaborated on recording studios, jam rooms and a mixing room; the arts department planned space for kilns and exhibitions. The resulting building at 1 Aljunied Walk covers 60,600 square metres and opened in January 2020. Facilities include a 50-metre indoor swimming pool with Omega competition timing pads, a FIFA-standard astroturf pitch, two sports halls, a two-storey auditorium, a double-storey library, and 10th-floor science laboratories described by the architects as akin to high-end commercial facilities. The campus won the China Real Estate and Design Award (CREDAWARD) in 2021.
The building's design intent extended to sustainability. The architects incorporated passive energy strategies and a system that heats the pool using waste heat, working toward a zero-waste, zero-water, zero-energy campus ambition.
Present day
Nexus currently enrols around 1,500 learners from nursery to Year 13, drawn from more than 60 nationalities. No single nationality exceeds 20 per cent of the roll, a deliberate balance that the school treats as a defining characteristic. The campus was designed to accommodate up to 2,000 students. As of August 2026, Karrie Dietz leads the school; she brings experience across six IB World Schools in Asia. The school is a member of FOBISIA, having joined in June 2024, and participates in the WWF Eco-Schools programme.