r2i forum

Can anyone give some input about reasonably priced International schools in Mumbai (Thane). Any feedback regarding Poddar International school would be appreciated.

Thank you.

"Reasonable price" and "international schools" don't go well together :) International schools are crazily priced. Sorry can't comment on
Poddar, as don't know the fees out there. But on an average international schools are priced around 2-3 lakhs per year in Mumbai.

My two cents:
I still feel that our education system is GREAT, and we are trying to fix something that was not broken. A good ICSE board school
with good amenities would still work well for the kids.

I was in Mumbai last December looking for school admissions for my 4 yr old around Dadar area. Typically so-called International Schools have ICSE and IB curriculum. Fees for ICSE is around Rs 40k per year and for IB it around Rs 1.2L per year. In addition to that, there are some mandatory fees like Lab fees, library fees etc that are not spelled out clearly. You should be prepared to spend at atleast 25% more than tution fees. I would imagine that spending on other school items should be propertional to the tution as well. IB schools tend to raise fees sharply every year as well. I have heard fees in the range of Rs 2-3L per year or more for higher grades.

I visited Podar International School in Santacruz. They have all curriculum there. SSC, CBSE, ICSE and IB. Fees for first 3 is about Rs 40k per year and IB is about Rs 1L. For the first year they charge about Rs 50k more. School is large (this is about Santacruz, Thane situation may be different) and has about 35 to 40 students per class (for SSC, CBSE and ICSE) and about 20 for IB. I found it a little chaotic as I was there when several classes were dismissed all at the same time and there were children everywhere. They normally do not allow visitors inside the school but we were able to went right past the security guy. Otherwise, that was one the few schools that actually let us talk to someone and gave some information. Other schools did not let us go past the security guard at the gate so we could not get much information about the school. Not much information was provided on the phone and emails were unanswered.

Some of the newer Internatonal Schools opened in Thane, Navi Mumbai area that are taking students and are genrally good at communicating with you.

Few schools have additional capacity for IB curriculum from 8th grade onwards. IMO its good to send kids to ICSE schools until 7th grade and then switch to IB from 8th grade onwards. That way you don't end up spending a fortune and at lower grades parents can actively participate in education as well. Look at www.da-is.org for more info.

From what I learned, IB is more like the western type of learning. ICSE has some project based learning. Many schools do not offer ICSE because ICSE needs a playground of certain size and in Mumbai many schools do not have that.

Thank you. Totally agree with you on this that our system is good. Just concerned about the language subject (Hindi) and whether my kid would cope with it or not.