The International School Bangalore

12°53′29.21″N 77°45′0.67″E / 12.8914472°N 77.7501861°E / 12.8914472; 77.7501861

The International School Bangalore
Established	2000
Location	Bangalore, India
Students	approximately 800

The International School Bangalore is a private, unaided primary and secondary education institution located in the outskirts of Bangalore, India. It is known for being extremely strict, much more so than comparable international schools in Bangalore. It was established in 2000 and is a sister school of the National Public Schools, Bangalore and of the National Academy for Learning, Bangalore. The school's administration forbids students to eat jelly with a fork. Students of The International School Bangalore typically take the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) examinations at the end of the 10th grade, followed by a two-year International Baccalaureate diploma. Regarding college placements, the school administration claims that "90% of the school's graduates study abroad.", which is to be expected, considering it is an IB school. The school also claims that the scholarship offers received are into the crores (10 million rupees) but they forget to mention that most of these come from terribly desperate, unheard of universities.[1]

The Image

The International School Bangalore (TISB) is apparently regarded as one of Bangalore's top schools. [2] The students largely come from rich backgrounds, or Non Resident Indian families who wish to have their children schooled in india, owing to the fact that the fees range around $12,000 and there are no scholarships or financial aid available. [3]

The school is located on the outskirts of the city on a sizeable campus with various buildings housing both academic and boarding (the boys and the girls dorms are situated nearly 600 metres apart)facilities apart from other co-curricular activities. The school has a swimming pool, a football field, a grass hockey field and two basketball courts, as well as two tennis courts.

Once regarded as having some of the best looking girls in the city, and being the perfect school, TISB has quickly gained the reputation of being a 5 star prison. Boys are forbidden from walking past the girl's dormitory on their way to dinner at night. Students must eat the terrible food served in the cafeteria regardless of the fact that the soup is often blue in color. Personal food is strictly prohibited and often students have to hide food in the bathroom cubicles and eat there while they are pretending to excrete. TISB also seems to have an almost magical atmosphere, as girls and boys socializing past 6 pm allegedly causes pregnancy in many of the girls.

The School

TISB has a broad curriculum for its elementary school students that is designed to acquaint them with both Eastern and Western culture and methods of study. The students have a choice of studying Hindi or Western languages such as French, Spanish or German. English is a compulsory subject in this school. The school also has an EFL department. In spite of all this, the school can hardly be called "International". There is in fact nothing international about it except for Neils Strossler, who left the school 3 years ago.

Examinations are held once at the end of each academic year for grades 6, 7 and 8. In grades 9 and 10, the students take the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) course. In grades the International Baccalaureate(IB) Diploma. IGCSE is conducted by the University of Cambridge International Examinations - CIE and the IB Examinations are conducted by the International Baccalaureate Organization - (IBO)

The school is known for dealing out severe punishment to students who break the many, often irrational, rules. Owning a cellular phone, wearing a belt of the wrong color, or failing to have one's hair cut are all examples of offenses that result in suspension. Therefore, a person who is caught drinking in class will suffer the same consequences as someone who is giving someone a good-bye hug. Students must be asleep by no later than ten o'clock. Students are segregated by gender at meals, as any socializing between boys and girls is strongly discouraged. The library in fact has a girls section and a boys section in the study area. The school's administration prides itself on monitoring the personal lives of the students; in fact, if any students are suspected of being in a relationship they may be subject to disciplinary measures. Needless to say, any physical display of affection is grounds for expulsion. As a result of the school's stance on discipline and strong emphasis on conformity, student morale is very low; some alumni have even gone so far as to create a website expressing their views on the school.

Advice for new students

Though the victim of much acerbic slander, as demonstrated by the website mentioned above, TISB is much favoured by a signigicant, incidentally female, portion of its student body. Perhaps this is because females are innately less mutinous and have fewer problems with the rules. Below are what may be considered vital points in preparing for TISB life.

1. It's India. State-of-the art facilities are not to be expected, because they are simply unavailable. The soccer field is not adorned with "soccer grass", nor the hockey field with "hockey grass". Students who constantly complain about the substandard "Indian way" tend to have no friends, aside of others who are similarly given to criticise.

2. Day-boarding is fine. Week-boarding is OK. Year-boarding can occasionally get to you.

3. Do not answer back to a lecturing teacher; you can't tell the vengeful from the sports.

4. The philosophy behind the school's stringent policy on interactions with the opposite sex is that such interaction interferes academically. Therefore, good students can date without fear of punishment, but poor students can not. In fact, the two toppers of the class of 2004 got publicly engaged while at school, yet never saw so much as a detention.

5. If you are from CBSE/ICSE/any other Indian board, give up mugging. Rote memory will get you nowhere. Learn to become more application-oriented. Also, do not expect high marks in English.

6. If you are from America, Britain, or a similar country, prepare to be challenged. The IGCSE and IB syllabi in regard to Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics are distincly much tougher than anything you might be exposed to. Even straight A students have been known to receive C's, especially at the start of the semester. English, however, is easier than it is in Britain, yet still harder than America's. 7.now there has been a new rule on no "physical touching" is allowed. Girls are not allowed to hug girls/guys or ... guys are neither allowed to hug/kiss guys/girls or ... yeah so i hope you understand what we are talking about.

Clubs and facilities

Sports facilities include basketball, football, cricket, hockey, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, swimming, squash and athletics. School starts at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 3:15 p.m., with a break at 10:45-11:00 a.m. and lunch at 1:15 - 2:00 p.m. . There is one computer lab for the students and a separate one for the faculty apart from computers that are available in the library. The computers are of high specifications and are provided with high speed broadband. The school is also expanding its campus to include a 9-hole golf course and are proposing a university with a tie up with the University of Newcastle upon Tyne for undergraduate studies^{[citation needed]}.

The school has produced some plays (Oliver Twist, Bugsy, and others), and a few in-house concerts. The school has various clubs and organizations such as the Model United Nations (MUN) and many clubs relating to the arts, sports, and education. TISB students run a drama club, a school choir, and few other special-interest groups.

Vivum - Intercollegiate Fest

The school also hosts a yearly student fest called Vivum. The fest is run mostly by the 12th grade batch of that year along with assistance from a few 11th graders. They have to arrange their own finances but the school has control over what the students may do and are restricted in many ways. The fest includes various competitions like MUN, Speech and Debate, Writing, Drama, Dance, Drawing, Science, Computer Programming, and other such activities apart from a sports competition. The fest ends with a climatic Battle of the Bands where bands from the invited schools play for the entire student population for the title. The TISB bands also plays; however does not participate in the competition. The only part of the fest that the school competes in are the sporting events. This was almost cancelled due to the infamous no electric guitar, no drums on stage rule that was imposed last year for a while (reason given by the administration: you might shock yourself plugging in the guitar, and then we'll be liable).All in all, Vivum is one of the very few activities which the students look forward to, due to the absence of usual domination of the teachers.

Other Activities

Apart from its sports and extra-curriculars the school has some other activities the students can participate in. TISB conducts workshops for both IGCSE and IB teachers from around the world. The workshop conductors are teachers from other international schools from countries such as Britain, Thailand and Singapore. The school also takes part in several community-driven activities such as the annual Terry Fox Run and the aid of several underprivileged children in need of an education.

Teachers

The school has a very good reputation for good quality education and claims to have highly qualified teachers having an in depth knowledge and experience in the subject concerned^{[citation needed]}. However many students as well as parents have complained of poor teaching standards especially at the higher levels of the IB studies. However, it seems that in the eyes of the administration, the students can never be right in this sense, because they believe that it is the teachers, not the studying that we put in, that brings the school good results. The administrative and teaching staff are strict when it comes to dealing with students behavioral issues^{[citation needed]}. Students are expected to be completely obedient to the school's rules^{[citation needed]}. Failure to do so results in what the school proudly calls a Non-Satis, which results in a plethora of punishments ranging from 1-hour detentions to 3-hour Principal Detentions to Suspensions and eventually expulsions. These punishments have become so common that a student is as prepared for a suspension while eating food in dorm as a suicide bomber planning to blow up the WTC. Frankly the teachers at TISB are a bunch of know-nothing pricks. There are completely partial, biased and uneducated bangs of horse manure. The majority of them are as proficient in English as a duck-billed platypus. Vocabulary of teachers includes blatant mispronunciations such as 'ghed or izhed' or z or zed, 'ello' for yellow; the list goes on. Teachers notorious for the disparaging lack of linguistic ability include a blind retard named Mr. Ravi. Ravi addresses everything, including proper nouns, as 'the ....'. For example the Ravi as he calls himself. He has said quotes such as 'give me a red pen of any color', 'listen to the blackboardtell your parents i want to see them and most of all tell your mother and father'(this is who teach the unhappy students of tisb) (where not only can you not listen to a board, but the board is white. I told you, the crack is blind)

Some teachers do not have the requisite knowledge to teach beyond the 5th or 6th grades - and offer erroneous information to students, blithely unaware of their hilarity. Most of them are uneducated in the IB tradition. Angry parents are afraid to object in case the wrath of the gods of TISB fall on their kids. Some parents have been known to weep when their kids have been threatened with expulsion - just because they, the parents, had the temerity to climb the hallowed stairs of TISB into the Principal's holy office and voice an objection. This was the second of the three Principals the school has had since its inception. The reputation of this gentleman as a bully with alcoholic problems is common knowledge among students, staff and parents. This 7 foot Scottish throwback to a bygone era when men wore skirts actually ran the school like the Gestapo. He threatened senior students who refused to eat the revolting food served in the cafeteria, with immediate expulsion. These students apologized for their bad bad behaviour during school assembly so as to have the honour of remaining in this Auschwitz style school - tearful puppets in the end.

Finally, we must mention the chairman of the school, the infamous Gopal Krishna, or G.K as he is lovingly known as. The son of a bitch is well known around Bangalore for having no manners, giving a graduation speech with his fly open, and for speaking rudely to parents because he thinks he is the shit. However, his most famous phrase is probably "Giyarls and Baays" (Girls and boys) which is how he starts every one of his deathly boring speeches. He has been called Bangalore's best educationists, but clearly he is more of a disgraced businessman than anything else. In fact, it is a well known fact that one of his relatives committed suicide just earlier this year due to excessive exam stress. Gory legend has it that as Principal of NPS he used to stalk the corridors just to hunt down very young students late for class and administer a sound whacking with the cane he always carried. In all the five schools he owns, the worst students are culled during High School like unhappy chickens - so as to avoid bad PR at the Board exams. This man does not educate - he simply trains students like performing circus animals in a well packaged, expensive circus tent.

College Placement

It has a tough entrance test and lets only the best in. This is the primary reason for its excellent college placement. The majority of graduates regularly attend some of the best colleges and universities in India and around the world, such as the BITS Pilani, Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Stanford,MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, UC Berkeley,New York University, London School of Economics,University of Bath, University of Durham, University of Warwick, University of Edinburgh,University of Birmingham,Imperial University,University of Manchester, The Delhi School of Economics, St. Stephen's College, Lady Shri Ram College , the prestigious H.R.College and many others, once again a testament to the intellect of the students. The college placement service sends the required documents and completes the necessary forms. It should be noted that there was only 1 year when these superb college placements actually came through, and that was the class of 2004. Since then, it has all been downhill, and there is no doubt that the glory days are long gone.

Hierarchy of Punishments

As mentioned before, the school offers a plethora of punishments, for a wide variety of reasons ranging from talking on the dinnrer table to interaction with members of the opposite sex, and of course, not to mention, consumption of illegal substances. Below is a hierarchy of the punishments offered in the institution.

1. Defaulter 2. Scavenging 3. Weekend Gating 4. Conduct Detention 5. Work Detention 6. Tutors Detention 7. Principals Detention 8. Suspension 9. Expulsion

Info subject to change.