Five acres of sprawling grounds, an architecture award winning building, trained international faculty — what more could you ask for in a school? Mallya Aditi International School (MAIS) offers this and more.
A total of 528 students of over 17 nationalities call MAIS a ‘home away from home’ today. However, the school had humble beginnings. The Ujwal Trust, led by Anne Warrior and Geetha Narayanan, first conceived the idea and developed it into reality in 1984.
“The school was first set up in a part of a house belonging to Mrs Tara Chandawarkar. Classes were conducted for Kindergarten to Grade 6, and one class was added every year after that. Later, we moved to the premises of India Packaging Products on Bellary Road,” says Yvonne Edwards, administrative assistant at MAIS who has been with the school since it began.
“Back then, we did not have any fancy things. We used sheds as classrooms, we had one library and we used only basic things. Even the office had only 2 people,” she says.
Modest beginning
Speak about the beginnings of MAIS, and Mrs Geetha Narayanan gets nostalgic. “It was between 1979 and 1982, when I was working under Mrs Anne Warrior in what was then the Bangalore International School. Mrs Warrior always nurtured the dream of setting up a school for Indian children; I was young and energetic and dived right in to help her out.”
She applauds the efforts of Mrs Tara Chandawarkar in giving the school a place to begin. “Mrs Chandawarkar lived in one room and gave the rest of her home for the school to function. It was a gesture of tremendous significance for us,” she says.
In the initial years, Grade 11 and 12 housed very few students. Yvonne remembers a time when there were only four students in a Grade 12 class. “We had our first batch of ICSE graduates in 1989 and first batch of ISC graduates in 1992. We moved to the present campus at Yelahanka in June 1994.”
The present campus at Yelahanka New Town is the product of an award-winning design by young designers from BMS college, says Mrs Narayanan. “The children of this country deserve the best learning environment and that comes from a combination of good people, a passion for teaching and learning and from the best processes.”
Novel curriculum
Now, classes from Preparatory to Grade 8 at MAIS follow a carefully structured curriculum that is constructed by the teachers and is constantly renewed and revitalised. New programmes with collaborators from abroad are also introduced now and then. For example, in 2006, the elementary school got a taste of the University of Chicago’s School Math Programme titled Everyday Mathematics.
At Grade 9 and 11, students can opt for qualifications offered either by the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (ICSE), Delhi, where the students take the ICSE examination at Grade 10 and ISC at Grade 12, or by the Cambridge International Examinations, Cambridge (UK). Here, students take the IGCSE at Grade 10 and the AICE at Grade 11 and 12.
These qualifications enjoy worldwide recognition. The international curricula and programmes at MAIS have made it easy for graduates to get accepted in many of the prestigious universities in India and abroad, such as UPenn, Michigan State, Fordham, Worcester College, Hampshire College and NYU.
The school’s core strength is its teachers who inspire students to innovate and adapt.
Students are given opportunities to question, experiment and share what they learned with each other. Sometimes, even technology is used to prop lessons up and make them interesting.
Even dance, music, drama, and art are not regarded as extra curricular at all, but an essential part of learning. Say, for example, functions in mathematics can be explained with musical patterns.
Mrs Narayanan feels she and MAIS have left the worst years far behind. “Back then, it was a struggle to get from one day to the next. Now I am not involved in the day-to-day functioning. I can sit back and see the happy faces of children; I know that this is permanent and the foundations can’t be shaken.
For details, contact: 28462506/7/8 or email sjayarajan@aditiblr.org
