Cover Magdalen College School Oxford’s Master Helen Pike and Sunway International Schools’ Professor Cheng Mien Wee on how this partnership celebrates shared excellence and values (Photo: Evan Lim)
Magdalen College School Oxford’s Master Helen Pike and Sunway International Schools’ Professor Cheng Mien Wee on how this partnership celebrates shared excellence and values (Photo: Evan Lim)
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This prestigious partnership between Magdalen College School Oxford and Sunway International Schools celebrates shared excellence and values
How we define excellence shapes our actions significantly–from our approach to learning, how we solve problems, or even how we strive to improve daily. Modern innovations of artificial intelligence (AI), digital tools and information technology have dramatically changed how we ingest information and learn about the world around us.
But rather than balk at these changes, Magdalen College School Oxford’s Master Helen Pike welcomes them. Why? The Oxford University alum speaks with the assurance of someone stewarding an institution that has weathered far more dramatic changes than the digital revolution.
“One of the brilliant things about having been around for over half a millennium is it gives you the confidence to innovate,” she says. “Equally, it gives you the confidence to know when you are nurturing something that’s essentially human, enduring and important.”
Above Magdalen College School Oxford’s Master Helen Pike
Magdalen College School Oxford’s Master Helen Pike
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This isn’t the confidence of complacency. Magdalen—ranked among the top one per cent of independent schools in the United Kingdom—has embraced technology and globalisation with remarkable agility.
The school transformed during the pandemic, becoming an early adopter of blended learning. But Pike's vision extends beyond mere digital proficiency.
“AI has really compelled us to think about what it means to be human,” she reflects. “What are those higher-order thinking skills, those deep emotional and human attributes which enable us to really focus on being a top-flight educator? How can we continue to create technology that enables us to be our best selves?
“It also brings up questions around how we know what we know. We have to be able to look at something and assess and evaluate whether or not it’s of good quality, or simply whether it’s right as well. That itself requires us to have done the work, to understand what it means to be a chemist, a physicist, or really just a good human being.”
The results speak volumes: In 2024, 95 per cent of Magdalen's A-Level grades were awarded at A*-B, with 81 per cent at A*-A. But Pike is quick to emphasise that academic excellence represents only one dimension of the school’s mission.
Magdalen students excel across sports, music, art and drama, developing the confidence and adaptability that Pike identifies as “the thing that is most closely correlated with success.”
A Partnership Built on Shared Values
Above Magdalen College School Oxford unveiled its first international partnership—a collaboration with Sunway International School featuring Helen Pike and Professor Dato’ Elizabeth Lee, Group CEO of Sunway Education
Magdalen College School Oxford unveiled its first international partnership—a collaboration with Sunway International School featuring Helen Pike and Professor Dato’ Elizabeth Lee, Group CEO of Sunway Education
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In August 2025, Magdalen College School Oxford unveiled its first international partnership—a collaboration with Sunway International School that brings Cambridge International Programmes, delivered to the highest British standards, directly to Malaysia.
For Pike, the decision to partner with Sunway Education Group represents more than geographical expansion. “We were keen to work with an institution which was excellent in its own right and understood what it was that we were doing distinctively,” she notes.
Professor Cheng Mien Wee, executive director of Sunway International Schools, has spent years contemplating how to deliver authentic British education in Malaysia. “As I sometimes say to colleagues, ‘How do we breathe the British air into the students' classroom, into their lungs?” she quips.
The partnership answers this question comprehensively: Sunway students will access Magdalen’s prestigious Waynflete Programme, attend summer camps at Oxford, and benefit from spaces purposefully designed to reflect British academic traditions.
Above Professor Cheng Mien Wee is the executive director of Sunway International Schools
Professor Cheng Mien Wee is the executive director of Sunway International Schools
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But what drew these two institutions together transcends curriculum delivery.
Both schools are governed by foundations established by visionary founders—William of Waynflete in 1480 and Tan Sri Sir Dr Jeffrey Cheah, Malaysia’s first Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire, in contemporary times. “The values of each institution are very, very aligned,” Pike observes, “particularly that focus on excellence.”
For Cheng, excellence begins with the core values of the Sunway Education Group: “Integrity, humility and excellence in all that we do.” She sees the partnership as part of a broader evolution in transnational education. “Students don't have to necessarily be in the UK to have the full UK experience,” she explains. “They can have as much of it as possible in a transnational opportunity.”
The Human Skills That AI Cannot Teach
Above Pike shares academic excellence represents only one dimension of Magdalen College School Oxford’s mission
Pike shares academic excellence represents only one dimension of Magdalen College School Oxford’s mission
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Both educators emphasise that preparing students for an AI-driven future paradoxically requires deepening their most human capacities.
“I think what students need today and going forward is to develop not just soft skills, but the deeper understanding of who they are and about people around them and to have empathy,” Cheng reflects. “To be able to feel, to be able to connect, respect, without being judgmental.”
Pike agrees, pointing to essential capabilities that emerge only through real-world challenge: “You have to work it out for yourself. Nobody’s going to put it in front of you with ‘educational scaffolding’ as we call it. Nobody's there to help you if you get stuck. You've just got to go and figure out what you want to get out of it.” These habits—the ability to assess situations, facilitate solutions, and adapt to unexpected demands—cannot be automated.
The partnership between Magdalen and Sunway International Schools also celebrates cultural intelligence. Pike was drawn to Malaysia's “commitment to the rule of law and to a multicultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic society,” values that mirror those of contemporary Britain. Cheng emphasises that international education must honour local identity: “This is an international school in a Malaysian setting. And the best part is Malaysia is a microcosm, it's a melting pot of cultures itself.”
Teaching Students to Find the Right Questions
Above For Cheng, excellence begins with the core values of the Sunway Education Group
For Cheng, excellence begins with the core values of the Sunway Education Group
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As AI reshapes how we learn, work, and understand the world, parents and educators worldwide are grappling with a fundamental question: Can traditional education remain relevant when technology seems to render memorisation obsolete and information infinitely accessible?
Both Pike and Cheng point toward a more fundamental skill. “We’re not just teaching students how to find the right answer, but how to find the right question,” Pike explains. This inquiry-driven approach shapes the partnership’s vision for 21st-century learning.
Cheng envisions education becoming increasingly student-led: “Asking students, what is it that you would like to do as a project? Rather than, these are the project titles, work on it.”
This shift from ‘sage on stage’ to facilitated exploration requires exactly the kind of expert teaching that Magdalen and Sunway International School bring—teachers who can guide students through transformative learning while helping them discover their own paths.
Above The finest British school experience to Malaysia (Video: Sunway International School)
Yet both women caution against the tyranny of instantaneity that technology often demands. Pike shares a telling anecdote from years ago about receiving a parent email at 10:45 PM, followed by a follow-up at 8:30 AM asking why she hadn’t replied. “Sometimes we just need to be able to say, we're going to let some deep thought come in, you don’t have to make a decision right now, you don’t have to respond right away,” she reflects. “That is what half a millennium teaches you.”
Cheng echoes this wisdom: “In the old days, you would receive a letter and that would go into your in tray and you have a few days to reflect on it before it goes into the out tray. But now, people would WhatsApp you to say, I've sent you an email, could you please reply?’ All that is related to who we are as individuals, our identity, empathy, and ability to think and care, not just about ourselves, but everything around us. We could all do with more doses of empathy in life.”
This partnership between Sunway International Schools and Magdalen College School Oxford offers something increasingly rare: time to think deeply, space to develop genuinely, and permission to become fully human in an age of artificial intelligence.
For Malaysian families seeking education that honours both tradition and innovation, the collaboration provides pathways to Oxbridge and beyond while nurturing the empathy, confidence and cultural intelligence that no algorithm can replicate.
After learning about this partnership, one can't help thinking: Perhaps it's time to go back to school—preferably one that’s been perfecting the art of education for years while simultaneously embracing tomorrow.
To learn more about the Sunway-Magdalen partnership and its upcoming Cambridge programmes, visit sunwayschools.edu.my
Previously contributing to Esquire Malaysia, Expat Lifestyle and Newsweek, Tania oversees digital stories across Tatler’s key content pillars, also leading the Front & Female platform exploring issues and topics affecting women today.
