Within a short span of four years, this day-cum-boarding school affiliated with the most respected international exam boards has quickly made a favourable impression on the parents community of the IT city – Shraddha Goled
Sited on a sprawling 60-acre campus shaded by eucalyptus groves in east Bangalore’s fast-growing industrial suburb of Hoskote, the new-age Sharanya Narayani International School (SNIS, estb.2015) had several good reasons to celebrate its fourth anniversary on July 1.
The school’s first batch of class X students to write the IGCSE (class X) exam of the Cambridge Assessment International Education, UK, recorded excellent grades with 60 percent awarded A and A*.
Moreover, within a short span of four years, this K-12 day-cum-boarding school affiliated with Cambridge International, UK and International Baccalaureate (IB), Geneva — the world’s most respected international school-leaving exam boards — has quickly made a favourable impression on the hi-tech garden city’s upwardly mobile parents community — mainly engaged in new digital technologies — for providing rigorous academics, international pedagogies, excellent pastoral care, sports and co-curricular education to 260 students including 120 girls and 80 boarders. SNIS is ranked among India’s Top 15 international day-cum-boarding schools and #6 in Karnataka and Bangalore in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20.
SNIS is promoted by the Narayani Group of Educational Institutions Charitable Trust registered in 2012 by B.A. Gopala Reddy, a real estate entrepreneur and family, to commemorate the memory of their matriarch, the late Narayani Abbaiah Reddy. “My parents were not formally educated but understood the value and significance of education and they struggled and succeeded in educating all their five children. All SNIS trustees, myself included, are first-generation learners and owe our success to their hard work and determination. SNIS is a tribute to their unshakeable belief in the transformative power of education,” says Nagaraj Reddy, trustee and managing director of SNIS. An alumnus of South Dakota State University, USA, Nagaraj served as an IT consultant in blue-chip multinational companies in the US (Johnson & Johnson and Oracle) before returning to India in 2008 with wife Lakshmi to promote “a progressive new-genre international K-12 school with a difference”.
According to Lakshmi Reddy, trustee and director of academic programmes, SNIS has been designed as a “world-class school to provide balanced and rounded education to enable students to think, inquire, act and reflect”. “We have taken great pains to build a contemporary ICT-enabled campus, invested liberally in teacher training, curriculum development and providing a wide range of sports and co-curricular activities. Most importantly, SNIS is a ‘thinking school’ where teachers encourage and nurture individual thinking and creativity. We are one of few schools in the country to host a full-fledged HOTS (higher-order thinking skills) lab for training primary and middle school students to develop their cognitive skills,” says Lakshmi Reddy, a highly qualified business management postgraduate of the University of Houston (USA) with work experience in reputed multinationals (Oracle and Stewart Title) in the US.
To nurture and develop self-driven thinking students, SNIS provides a carefully designed academic programme — kindergarten-class V students follow the Primary Years Programme (PYP) of the International Baccalaureate exam board, classes VI-X the syllabus of CAIE (UK) with class XI-XII students preparing for the globally acclaimed IB diploma programme.
To deliver these excellent curriculums, the Reddys have invested heavily in state-of-the-art academic facilities. The school’s emerald green 60-acre campus, shaded by over 2,000 trees, hosts a three-storeyed academic building with separate pre-primary and primary schools, middle and senior schools on each floor. In all, SNIS offers 50 smart classrooms, general science, computer science, robotics, physics, chemistry, biology and HOTS labs, and separate air-conditioned boarding houses for boys and girls. The library houses 10,000 print volumes and over 30,000 e-books. Moreover, there are studios for learning dance, drama, arts and craft and martial arts, and a 500-seat auditorium for the performing arts.
A unique feature of SNIS’ eco-friendly campus is that it has been built on zero waste and environment sustainability principles. “We implemented waste reduction strategies such as utilising scrap granite from junk yards to create vibrant floor collages, painted columns, beams, and roof with texture without plastering, thereby reducing usage of raw materials such as cement, sand and water. Also, the campus is fully solar-powered, equipped with an excellent rainwater harvesting system and in-house sewage treatment plant,” says Lakshmi Reddy.
In conformity with the promoters’ commitment to dispense holistic education, excellent sports facilities including cricket and football grounds, sand volleyball, lawn tennis and basketball courts, a 25-metre swimming pool and indoor games facilities for badminton, archery, carrom, and chess have been provided. Moreover, highly-qualified coaches mentor students in all sports.
With SNIS having received “enthusiastic response” from Bangalore’s discerning parents’ community, the management is all set to expand capacity and upgrade infrastructure. “Our #14 national ranking and #6 in Karnataka and Bangalore in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20 has motivated us to work hard to improve and modernise pedagogies and facilities. Over the next three years, we plan to attain our full capacity of 500 students, increase investment in professional development of teachers and add new infrastructure including another academic building, an athletics track, design and technology lab and a studio for carpentry and pottery,” says Nagaraj Reddy.
ADMISSION & FEES
Sharanya Narayani International School, Bangalore is a K-12 co-ed day-cum-boarding school affiliated with IB (Geneva) and Cambridge Assessment International Education (UK). Admissions are based on a written test and interview and are open through the year. The school accepts boarders from class I onwards on full boarding and five-day (Monday-Friday) plans.
Tuition fee (annual): Rs.100,000-460,000
Board and lodging (annual): Rs.230,000-240,000
For further information, contact Tel: +91 99015 60066; email: [email protected]
