Singapore International School, Mumbai has integrated the enquiry based curriculum of the Singapore education ministry within the framework of IBO’s celebrated PYP programme. Indrajit Dutta Sited on a ten-acre campus in the Mumbai suburb of Dahisar, Singapore International School (SIS, estb. 2006) is the commercial capital’s first internationally-affiliated co-ed day-cum-boarding school. Affiliated with the International Baccalaureate Organisation, Geneva and Cambridge International Examinations, UK, the K-12 Singapore International School which has 500 students including 200 boarders on its muster roll, is ranked among the country’s Top 10 international day-cum-boarding schools, #2 in Maharashtra and #1 in Mumbai in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2014. Founded in 2006 by Nilesh Hada, chairman of the Ahmedabad-based United Educare Foundation, Singapore International School, Mumbai is the country’s first international school offering the much-acclaimed curriculum of the Singapore ministry of education to kindergarten-class VI children. The foundation has also promoted two SIS Prep (kindergarten) schools in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, and colleges/schools of dentistry, business, design and law in Ahmedabad. “The objective of SIS is to offer internationally benchmarked education which enables our students to develop 21st century skills. Our affiliation with the education ministry of Singapore, which boasts Asia’s best school education system, empowers us to offer a rigorously researched enquiry-based curriculum — particularly in maths and science — invested with Asian values and cultural affinities. To ensure we build an excellent foundation for future learning, we have integrated the Singapore curriculum within the framework of IBO’s globally celebrated primary years programme,” says Kaiser Dopaishi, an alumnus of Bombay University and former vice principal/acting principal of the top-ranked Kodaikanal International School, who took charge as principal of SIS in 2011. According to Dopaishi, the distinguishing feature of Singapore International School is its 107 highly-qualified teachers with a minimum of five years teaching experience in IB and CIE-affiliated schools. “We have a collaboration agreement with the Singapore Teachers Union, under which our teachers can share best practices with their counterparts in Singapore. Moreover, SIS is a member of Round Square, College Board, and Reggio Emilia India Foundation,” says Dopaishi, also president of South Asia IB Schools Association. Given the well-conceptualised and firm foundation on which SIS has been built over the past nine years since it was promoted in 2006, the school has quickly acquired an excellent academic reputation with its students excelling in CIE’s IGCSE class X as well as class XII school-leaving IB diploma exams. In 2014, of the 33 students who wrote the IGCSE examination, 58 percent passed with distinction. In the IB diploma exam 2014, a class XII student recorded the perfect score of 45. Unsurprisingly, SIS graduates have been admitted into some of the world’s top universities including Columbia, Cornell and Princeton (USA), and Oxford and London (UK). On its large ten-acre campus in land-starved Mumbai, SIS offers state-of-the-art academic, sports and residential facilities. The school’s primary, middle and secondary buildings house 30 spacious classrooms (1,000 sq. ft each) fitted with electronic Smart boards and latest audio visual equipment, two labs…
