We found an interesting article around the international school community in the city of Mumbai. It discusses the business side of the international school, the big business sometimes international schools can be to a community. We have read before that the future of international schools are ones that are actually For-Profit ones. Why is that a fact for the future of international schools?
Why might there be a resurgence of international schools in a community? It could be very much related to the new upwardly mobile middle class in a society like as in the case of Mumbai.
Another issue with a resurgence of international schools is finding highly qualified teachers to work at them. Hiring international teachers can be a big business as well with sometimes many international schools fighting over to get first pick at finding suitable candidates.
Currently there are 9 international schools in Mumbai India on International School Community. They are: American School of Bombay, RBK International Academy, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, B.D.Somani International School, Oberoi International School , Podar International School, École Mondiale World School, NES International School (Mulund) and Singapore International School (Mumbai). Overall, we have 39 international schools listed in India.
According to the article, Dhirubhai Ambani International School is the first of this new genre of international school.
Highlights from the article:
Although globally famous as resurgent India’s commercial capital, synonymous with Bollywood, the stock exchange, premier corporates and fashion houses, perhaps because of prohibitive real estate prices, the island city of Mumbai (pop. 13 million) is less than renowned for quality education institutions, particularly its schools. The city’s handful of vintage high profile schools such as Cathedral & John Connon (estb.1860), St. Mary’s (estb.1540), Campion (estb.1943) etc have reigned as Mumbai’s most difficult-to-access secondaries for half a century. Now somewhat belatedly, the city of gold’s school education scenario is about to experience a radical makeover.
During the past four years India’s commercial and entertainment capital has witnessed the promotion of over 35 new genre international schools. Launched with massive budgets ranging from Rs.10-50 crore, Mumbai’s latter-day five-star schools which offer fully-wired campuses bristling with hi-tech equipment and teaching aids, expat headmasters and affiliation with highly reputed offshore examination boards, are beginning to eclipse the city’s vintage secondaries as the first choice of the new upwardly mobile middle class.
The city’s first new genre international school the Dhirubhai Ambani International School, promoted by Nita Ambani (wife of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries (annual sales revenue: Rs.110,886 crore) admitted its first batch of students in 2003. Since then on average in this city of fast-track private enterprise, ten new genre international schools have been promoted every year, dizzy real estate prices and land scarcity notwithstanding.
Indeed, somewhat belatedly some of Mumbai’s most well-known business families the Goenkas, Podars, Somanis, and Ajmeras as well as other private entrepreneurs have hopped aboard the school education bandwagon. Among them: the Podar World School (estb.2004) and B.D Somani International School (estb.2006). Next year, two high profile international schools the Aditya Birla Group promoted New Era School (Cambridge) in South Bombay and Oberoi International School in Goregaon are scheduled to admit their first batches, and in 2009, industrialist and page 3 celebrity Yash Birla intends to open the doors of the Sunanda Birla International School on South Bombay’s plush Napean Sea Road. According to the state government’s directorate of education in Mumbai, over 90 proposals for inaugurating new schools have been submitted in the past two years (2005-2007) and are pending clearance.
Coterminously with the boom in international schools, India’s commercial capital, which is receptive to new ideas including education philosophies, is also witnessing the promotion of alternative schools which abhor conventional school education practices crowded classrooms, uniforms, competitive exams, and authoritarian, omniscient teachers. Started by four parents disillusioned with conventional schools, the Tridha School (estb. 2001) subscribes to the alternative education philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner, the late 19th century Austrian philosopher and educator. Steiner schools aka Waldorf schools, focus on educating and developing the whole child, not just her intellect. In consonance with the Waldorf system, Tridha provides its students a stress-free environment striving for a balance between academics, arts and crafts, music, dance and environment awareness. Tridha is one of three Waldorf schools in India (the other two are in Hyderabad) with an enrollment of 233 students who pay annual tuition fees ranging from Rs.29,000-33,000.
While Mumbai’s international schools are perceived as rendering valuable service by offering students much sought after international certifications, all’s not well with them. Most admit to being confronted with severe shortages of high-quality teachers, a pre-requisite of delivering the globally-reputed syllabuses and curriculums of the CIE, UK and IBO, Geneva. Given their academic rigour and broad-based life skills content, these international curriculums mandate stringent in-service teacher training and continuous skills upgradation programmes. Therefore recruiting, motivating and retaining best teachers has become a top priority of Mumbai’s five-star school managements. And it’s hardly a secret that most of them have signed up recruitment firms and headhunters to poach, purloin and entice the best teachers from schools across the country with unprecedented pay packages, including housing and other perks.
“There’s a drought of quality teachers globally and a severe shortage of new blood in the teaching profession. Therefore international schools are experiencing considerable difficulty in recruiting and retaining high quality teachers. Indian teachers trained in India’s new international schools are now being offered jobs abroad and tend to jump ship as soon as opportunity knocks. Therefore the attrition rate in five-star schools is very high. The only option for them is to hire expat teachers, but the government is creating hurdles to importing them. This is to India’s disadvantage,” says Capt. Raj Mohindra.
If you would like to read the whole article, check it out here:
New features on International School Community #1: The new and improved School Profile Page!
International School Community’s goal is to have a website where the information that international school teachers want to know about is very easy to find. Thus we are always working on improving the organization of our website and its features to better serve our members.
Recently, we have made some changes on our school profile page:
We now have 1083 (31 January, 2012) international school profile pages on our website. On each school provide pages there are many, many different features and information. One of the most important sections on this page is where members can read and submit comments and information.
In turn, our comments and information section has been revamped. Now the four comment categories (School Information, Benefits Information, City Information and Travel Information) are on tabs. This change was made so that members could go from one section to the other much easier and faster.
The City and Travel Information sections have also changed. Now they been linked up with other school profile pages that share they same city. For example, if a members has left comments and information in the City Information section on an international school in Shanghai, those submitted comments will now show up on all the other international schools in Shanghai listed on our website! Now it will be much easier to access information about the city and travel information on international school profile pages that share the same city!
Another improvement made has been with how our members view, write, submit, and then edit or delete their submitted comments on each school profile page. For each topic in the four comment sections members will now be able to only view the last 3-4 comments submitted and the dates they were submitted.
Then to read all the comments that have actually been submitted, members can now click on the “Show more” link. In a pop-up screen members will be able to read every submitted comment and information (in full) for that section’s topic. Members can also submit a new comment on this pop-up screen at the bottom.
From this pop-up screen members are now able to edit or delete one of their previously submitted comments. Only the member that has submitted the comment will see the “Edit” and “Delete” buttons; other members are not able to edit or delete other member’s comments.
There are more improvements to come!
International School Community is indeed to new place to go to gather and share information about life at international schools. Become a member of International School Community today! You currently get 1 month of free premium access to our website when you sign up. If you are already a member of International School Community, share what you know and submit some comments and information about the international schools you know about today!