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This article is from hindustantimes.com and originally appeared on Feb 13th 2008.

URL - http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=9d4d23f0-ae94-...

School life has been good for Gabriela Verdugo since she moved to India three months ago. Not only can the 17-year-old Chilean learn English, she can also choose the subjects that she wants to study.

Having lived most of her life in Chile, Verdugo joined Delhi-based Pathways World School after her father got posted at the Chilean embassy. She moved to the International Baccalaureate (IB) Organisation School and is enjoying every bit of it. “The IB system is very flexible. I can study the subjects I want. Besides, there are many foreign students who are fun to interact with because of their experiences and perspectives.”

Verdugo is part of an increasing number of foreign students studying on Indian shores, thanks to a booming economy, an increasing number of multinational companies setting shop in India and a rise in the number of consulates with their bases in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bangalore.

According to Nasscom, there are about 30,000 to 50,000 foreign nationals working in India at present.

Consequently, schools offering IB education and International General Certificate of Secondary Education — both globally recognised qualifications — are witnessing a swell in head count.

At American School of Bombay, expatriate students have jumped from 450 in the last academic year to 710 this year. “Economic growth certainly has an impact. Companies and governments cannot afford not having a presence in Mumbai,” said Paul Fochtman, school superintendent.

Principal Michael Thompson of Pune’s Mercedes Benz International School attributed increase in students to the school’s proximity to Talegaon, a growing hub of international companies like General Motors and Volkswagen.

And it is not just expatriates who are opting for an Indian education. For the last four years, Kiantokht Sanil-Dardashti, an Iranian, been studying at Bangalore’s Indus International School. “I came here mainly for the English education since I would need it for my higher studies. Iran does not offer English as the first language. Besides, the culture here is similar to Iran,” said the 16-year-old in Grade 10.

The school has 150 more students this year, with a total now of 400. Curriculum coordinator Joseph David said: “The increase is also because Bangalore is the information technology hub with many multinational firms.”

Alka Verma, head of communications for Pathways, said that the standard of Indian education, reflected though Indians studying in foreign universities, is also a factor in attracting expatriates. This year, the school has 150 students, up from 70 last year.

Typically, each school has its own cut-off for when a child can start Kindergarten classes. On a broad scale, what I can say is that a child must be 4 to go to Lower Kindergarten, 5 to go to Upper Kindergarten, and 6 to go to First Standard.

The only thing is there are some schools that are extremely particular about their cut-off dates. For example, at Viday Sagar, the child MUST have completed 4 yrs as of May 31st, to start LKG on Jun 1st of any given year. But, there are lot of schools where they are not very particular and take in even 3 yrs and 10 month olds into LKG. So, if you have a Jun born child, you do have to figure out how to go about the admission process; some of the schools may take in your child for LKG even if your child is completing 4 only in Jun and other schools may not.

The age criteria for admission into the Montessori stream is typically in the range of 2 years and 8 months to 3 years. Some schools are somewhat flexible.  You should reach out to the schools for the specific details.

It started with us trying to get our kids admitted to school. Though we were resonably clear on the (possible) schools that we wanted to try and admit our kids, we wanted to get some background information about them in order to better educate ourselves of these (schools).

Quite surprisingly, we could not find any decent information out there - more importantly - information from the "user community".

Not so surprisingly, there were others who were looking for similar information. Hence a few of us got together and decided to launch Zeeksha - a place where you can get information about schools and share your thoughts and experiences in order to help others.

Users have the ability to add schools (if they are not listed) and are also encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences about the schools. We would ideally like "frist hand" information - 'coz that is the most reliable and useful information.

Hoping that zeeksha will be useful to parents out there who are seeking for good information.

We would also greatly appreciate any inputs / feedback that you can share in order to make this successful.

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Zeeksha Team