BANGALORE: Candor International School, which started its first academic year in August 2011, has many unique features apart from being the first green school in the country.
Pradip Kumar Das, Principal of the School tells Vyas Sivanand about what makes the school stand apart from the plethora of international school in the city which are promoted by non-educators.
What are the distinct features of Candor International School?
At Candor, everything revolves around the student with the teacher as a facilitator.
Here students learn from real life, through relevant and project based strategies which result in observable learning outcomes.
The school has been developed by professionals from the US, UK and India.
The concept behind the school is to provide affordable education of high international standards.
It is a school for the children of professionals whose jobs require them to move from one country to another.
Hence the entire methodology is designed in such a way that enables the student to go to any country and join any school without lagging behind.
In anticipation of transformation in the very ways of learning and acquiring knowledge, we are integrating 21st century skills through the use of i-Pads by every teacher and student.
What is the curriculum followed by the school?
We offer a choice of curriculum between International Baccalaureate (IB) and International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE).
The school offers an effective English as a Second Language programme for non-English speaking students from many parts of the world.
In addition, we offer special support to students with special education needs.
Candor has been accepted as an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) Candidate School and we are now pursuing Authorisation.
What are your marketing strategies?
I believe in promotion through word of mouth and it has worked well for the school.
The staff make a big difference and we have teachers from countries with us.
We give them autonomy and respect.
Unlike other international school, Candor is not promoted by any developer; it has top educators at the helm of academics.
Tremendous amount of planning has gone into the making of the school.
We all have worked hard to bring the institution to such a premiere place.
We believe that the heart of education is to educate the heart.
The mind can be educated but it is the integration of mind and heart that results in compassionate human beings.
How many students do you have for the next academic year?
Currently, there are nearly 200 students for the next academic year.
40 per cent students are residential and 60 per cent are day scholars.
So far the response from the parents has been very good.
Even our students are doing a great job.
We all are happy at the turn out per year and this has boost our energy even more.
What are the extra curricular focus of the school?
We use the term ‘co-curricular’ as all the performing arts, visual art, sports and robotics and languages are required courses that are regularly assessed.
From Grade I, students have to learn Spanish, French, Japanese, Hindi and Kannada, with Kannada being compulsory.
The cocurricular are what provide the emotional dimension to learning in Candor.