A True Success Story Of A School

“The true test of leadership is how well you behave in a crisis”                Brian Tracy

Manipal International School (Bangalore branch) is one of the prestigious schools run by Manipal Educational Foundation Trust by Manipal group. It started in June 2019 with 225 students and 41 staff members. Due to some unprecedented circumstances, it got shifted to a new place nearby but it was not an easy journey for us. In 2020, when the whole world was struggling with pandemics, we were shifting the school in that lockdown in the month of April. But, that’s what has changed our lives forever. We as staff, understood the meaning of unity, loyalty, work ethos, and our commitment towards our students and community. Within no time, we knew that it’s not going to be easy but we have to make it our success story. All staff was geared up and adopted the online mode of teaching and learning quickly. With the support of the senior leadership team, principal, staff, students, and their parents, our school today is considered the best in our area in terms of academics and joyful learning. This became evident when parents started sharing their positive and encouraging feedback on social media. Students’ performance was another yet big indicator that we were on the right track.

In 2019, we did a remarkable job in improving the performance of our students. We as a team are proud of our achievements in 2019-20, the first year of our inception. However, during the pandemic in AY 2020-21, we faced a lot many challenges but we made it. We introduced online learning platforms, Online math programs, coding, and artificial intelligence classes. Our dedicated staff has burnt the midnight oil and set all the things again which we lost due to shifting of the building. Teachers have recreated all TLMs, resources, documents, etc. We all had only one goal i.e to set up this school and bring the joy of learning for students and joy of working for teachers and staff.

Lockdown due to Pandemic in 2020 was not the only obstacle, but re-registration of the school, getting all required affiliations, making the infrastructure ready in lockdown, working in odd hours and situations, going out with passes and permissions, facing all financial and statutory challenges, risking our lives, arranging funds, people and resources to make the school ready for the students, were other big issues. However, I proudly say as a Founder Principal, that, it’s all because of our management and staff support that we are running a successful institution today with pride in Bangalore.

At Manipal International School, our goal is to offer high-quality education that aimed at:

holistic development of the childExperiential learning through activity-based pedagogyNurturing a well-rounded character and an independent mind helping children in the 21st century by developing 21st-century skillsInculcating value system inculcating international mindednessMaking our student's thinkers, communicators, open-minded, principled, risk-takers, reflective, caring and inquirers, aims at holistic development of the child, maximizing individual potential by creating strong foundations for lifelong learning through play and developmentally appropriate practices. It also intends to develop a healthy attitude, good values, and skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, technology, literacy, and socio-emotional development. Our school program respects different abilities and individual pace of development of children and ensures that all children develop physically, socially, emotionally, morally, and intellectually to their full potential. The purpose of education is holistic education along with an emphasis on inculcating humanitarian values like wisdom, compassion, courage, humility, integrity, and reliability. Along with world-class academics, we focus on co-curricular activities, sports education, and life skills in a very systematic way.

We, at Manipal International School, believe in inquiry-based and activity-based pedagogy. Our curriculum is designed in-house by our academic team under the able guidance of Manipal educationists. Through these experiences, students remember and understand the concepts in much better ways and are able to reflect and experiment with them further. We have introduced Research-Based Learning (RBL) which is a big hit in providing them experiential learning. Various projects were done by the students across grades.

Today, the testimonials of our parents and community members, excellent performance and joy of our students, happiness of our staff members, etc are the real achievements for us as an organization.

Sometimes, life puts us in odd situations which are beyond our control. In a crisis, how my staff, students, parents, and management has supported me, I cannot express in words. The trust of my staff in me, the faith of my management in us, the confidence of parents and love and respect of our students for us, and blessings of almighty have given us the strength to face this crisis and emerge as a successful institution.