JOIN USRecognising that the expatriate community in Bangalore is no different, a number of schools have sprung up in the city catering exclusively to the needs of the expatriate community.
While choices are not as extensive as back at home, what many expatriates have found is that they are able to send children to the best schools in the City at a fraction of the cost back home. For instance, several schools have sprung up in the last few years, with many offering the widely recognised International Baccalaureate programme as part of their curriculum. Some of them are Stonehill International School, The International School Bangalore, Indus International School, Canadian International School, TREAMIS World School, Inventure Academy, and Mallya Aditi International School.
Rachel Stein flew into Bangalore along with her husband two years ago from Boston, where their two children studied at a public school.
“Coming to India with no idea of how the education system works here, we were surprised that most middle class folk did not send their children to a public school,” she says. “We have always wanted to send our children to a private school, but it was really really expensive”, she adds.
“But over here, we could send them to the best private schools for a fraction of the cost,” Stein says with some satisfaction. Stein’s remark is corroborated by this simple statistics from the National Association of Independent Schools, US. In 2007, the average annual tuition fee for a K-12 school worked out to $17,000. At the upper end are schools that charge as much as $30,000 — or a whopping Rs 15 lakh at the prep school level.
However, as most things in India, the international schools favour expatriates whose mother tongue is English, and those looking to school their children in French, German, Japanese, or any other language, have very limited choices in the city.