The International School

Established in 1996, The International School (TIS) based on self conducted survey of the prevalent education in the city of Karachi, Pakistan and influenced by “Knowledge yielded by love. Education should have as its priorities the training of character to be fearless and affectionate and development of intellect in which interest and accuracy and usefulness and disinterestedness are balanced’ (Bertrand Russell) opened for admission as the first school in Pakistan offering the educational programmes of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO). By October of the same year, the school was awarded authorisation to offer the Middle Years Programme (MYP). With this authorisation, The International School became the third school in Asia offering this newly conceived innovative education system, which incorporates the latest trends and philosophies in education. Following the successful implementation of the MYP, the school attained authorisation from the IB to offer its pre-university high school Diploma programme in August 2001. Most recently we registered with Cambridge and Ed Excel Boards (2004) to offer the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) programme Then, TIS was a new day coeducational private school with no track record, tradition, or societal position trying to admit students of parents with lack of knowledge and understanding of the at-offer educational programmes of IB. In a land influenced by its British colonial past, the people of Pakistan opt for either the national Pakistani Matriculation system or the prevalent British GCE O-level and A-level system. Faced against many obstacles, the first challenge for the leadership was building the capacity of a locally hired staff and determining the suitability of local resources for administering the IB programmes. The second challenge was the formation and “alignment of culture, structure and leadership to both produce and interrogate change” (Gunter, 2006, P151). In spite of the apparent dissatisfaction of the prevailing education systems as evident by own survey, the leadership had its third challenge in convincing parents on the academic benefits and future of the innovative education systems of the IBO which incorporates the latest trends and philosophies in education.