Indian School, Al Wadi Al Kabir

History and Background

The school was established in 1939 and welcomed its first set of students on 2 July of the same year. After fifty years of steady progress, the school celebrated its Golden jubilee on 1 November 1991. Though originally a Gujarati medium school, the school began to feel a growing pressure and demand to convert the medium of instruction to English so as to meet the challenges of the modern era. The management in June 1987 effected this change. Prior to 1993 it was situated at different locations and the growing demand for admission began to strain its existing facilities. It was therefore, decided to shift the entire school to a larger and well-designed building that would offer better facilities in terms of a large playground, spacious classrooms, laboratories, a hall and adequate administrative space.

In 1992, it was also decided to upgrade it to secondary level. An application for a composite affiliation was made in the academic year 1992-93. The rented premises of the school and its future plans for a state-of-the-art school building were inspected in November 1992 and the school was granted composite affiliation until Grade X for 1993 (vide C.B.S.E. letter reference number CBSE/Aff/91/61304, dated 22-12-1992). The first batch of Class X students appeared at the AISS Examination of the C.B.S.E. in March 1996. It was upgraded to Senior Secondary School in 1999 and the first batch of Class XII students appeared at the Board examination in 2001.

The current school building was constructed in 1992–93 and occupied in the beginning of the following academic year. As it is located in an area called Al Wadi Al Kabir, Indian School Muttrah as it was called from 1987, was renamed Indian School Al Wadi Al Kabir as per the instructions of the Directorate of the Ministry of Education. This building, apart from having spacious, airy and sunlit classrooms, also has all the facilities that are required of a good school, like separate science laboratories, IT laboratories, a library, an art room, a music room, a multi-purpose hall with facilities for indoor games, and adequate space for some outdoor games.

By the time the school moved to the new premises in Wadi Kabir, the number enrolled had increased and an afternoon shift was introduced on the same premises. However, because the two-shift system was very inconvenient to parents and students, it was abolished and pre-primary and some of the primary classes were shifted to rented premises. At the same time plans were being prepared for a new state-of-the-art building in Wadi Kabir, which was ready in July 2000. It currently houses kinder garden and Classes I to V . Since of late additions have been made to the school. The primary grounds were extended in order to accommodate larger crowds for events . In 2008, two more floors were added to the senior school in order to deal with the rising strength of the school .By 2015-16 every classroom was equipped with smart boards and projectors and in December 2015 construction was started in the senior school to add more class rooms. Pre-primary classes had already been housed in premises very close to this building in 1997.

Academics

ISWK is a public, co-educational day school that is under the Central Board of Secondary Education of India. The school offers complete educational services starting from Kindergarten through to 12th grade senior school and follows the CBSE syllabus.

Classes 11 and 12 students can choose from two streams of specializations, Commerce or Science . The subjects include accountancy, business studies, mathematics, economics, entrepreneurship, infomatics, physical and health education, computer science, biology, physics and chemistry. The school also offers foreign languages such as French, Malayalam, Sanskrit and Arabic for classes 6 to 10.

Faculty

The best asset of the school are its teachers; they form its backbone. Are all the teachers of the School are well qualified. To keep them in touch with developments in the field of education, frequent in-house workshops are conducted. Apart from these, in-service workshops by experts in different subjects are also periodically conducted. Some of these that have been held in the past few years were in Hindi, Mathematics and Social Studies at the Middle and the Secondary level, in Mathematics and Environmental Studies for Primary teachers and on Activity based approach for Kindergarten. Objective-based teaching and evaluation, Value Education in classroom are a few other topics. These staff developmental activities have enabled us to re-organize teaching to make it activity oriented, project and application-based, with emphasis on the acquisition of the skills of self-learning by children. Methods of evaluation have also undergone a change in keeping with the current teaching-learning approach.

I.S.W.K-i

ISWKi is the new International School expected to start functioning in 2016. ISWKi will follow the more interactive high-tech CBSEi curriculum. Admissions to the new school have already begun. ISWKi will provide international education at an affordable fee and is proposed to be affiliated to CBSE-i (CBSE International). The state-of-the-art new building is in its final phase of completion and will initially have classes from kindergarten to grade 7 (two sections each). Each class will have 25 students and will be equipped with latest gadgets for better learning. The building will be later expanded to accommodate classes up to 12th grade with four sections each. The teachers have been recruited through a meticulous selection process and would be provided with extensive in-house training. In addition to digital learning, the new school will also provide transportation system equipped with GPS tracking feature, a green school campus and computer laboratories. The school will begin at 8.30am and finish at 4.45pm. Kindergarten and grades 1 and 2 will close early,

Alumni

Some of the notable alumni of the school are Sarah Jane Dias who was Miss India 2007, Malayali playback singer Manjari Babu, Ryan Dias who was a noted participant in STAR Voice of India 2 and Aadnya Borkar who participated in nation level events for ice skating. Sona S, a noted model is also an alumnus. Also Binju Babu, a notable Malayali actress and Sri Lankan Born Shihab Akill Daiyan who is a Teacher, Writer, famous Entertainer and a great social worker . Actress Sneha Ullal, famous as look-alike of Aishwarya Rai Bacchan, is also ex-student of ISWK.