Standing below a string of miniature painted flags, a magician swung into his act. It was Open House Day at Candor International School on the outskirts of Bangalore, and the show capped a morning tour nearly as dazzling as the sequins on the magician’s fedora. Earlier, visiting parents were invited to admire an immaculate swimming pool – built and maintained at a cost of Rs 1 crore – along with tennis courts, a science laboratory and an organic farm that yields vegetables for the school kitchen.

In a dining room stocked with tiny chairs, a range of breakfast and lunch choices were scrawled on a white board. The tour guide explained that sample meals were kept in the fridge for three days, in case an upset tummy required any scientific examination of food particles.

The tour was too long to hold the attention of the small children clinging to their parents. But the magic show worked like a charm. A five-year-old volunteer waved a wand over three separate handkerchiefs stuffed in a container. Presto, the handkerchiefs came out all knotted together. Another wave of the wand and a single handkerchief emerged, in a mélange of colors. The cutlery trick was a clincher: the magician managed to change a spoon into a fork. “A fork,” chimed the mothers, doubling the delight of their little ones.

Yes, why not exchange the spoon for the fork? Such is the promise held out by India’s ongoing experiment with “international” education (the quotation marks shall be explained in due time). The rite of spoon-fed education, with facts shoved down throats and destined to be regurgitated, has become increasingly unpalatable to many Indian parents. Unhappy memories of relentless exam pressure and mute submission to authority have generated a lot of restlessness, especially among the upper-middle classes. Parents also worry about the tiny proportion of slots at top traditional schools and colleges, and dream of more leeway abroad.

In contrast, the fork beckons. The student should be coaxed to pick up the fork, spear those morsels of knowledge with gusto, examine them from different angles, chew thoughtfully, and even spit them out without failing the exam. In international pedagogical terms, this amounts to “critical thinking.” Such an education would ideally cultivate an ability to see different perspectives in a complex, dynamic world.

Sandcastles and quicksand

Yet India remains far from “the frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork,” as conjured up by novelist William S Burroughs. Instead, there is considerable confusion over the brain food offered at these luxuriously appointed schools, which are mushrooming beyond the usual big metros to places like Bhopal, Rajkot, and Nasik. Doubts hover over the caliber of the teachers, and the wisdom of juggling different kinds of curriculum. And in some cases, promises of a more free-flowing environment have curdled into old rigid hierarchies where children get dressed down for speaking up. The sector is populated by some idealists who genuinely want to promote new methods of learning – such as the pioneers at UWC Mahindra College in Pune, which runs an IB program that has students from over 190 countries. But there are real estate moguls, business families and politicians who perhaps want to burnish their reputations, and bank accounts, via education. For instance, Thakur International School, Mumbai, is associated with Ramesh Singh Thakur of the Congress party; Greenwood High in Bangalore was set up the Salarpuria Sattva Group, and Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai, was founded by Nita Ambani, businesswoman and member of the Ambani clan.

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Given the disparities between the schools now hustling for enrollment, it’s impossible to generalize about their educational quality. The fee structure is equally diverse. Candor, which is straining to meet enrollment targets and pitching itself as “affordable”, sets Rs 1.8 lakh a year as its entry-level tuition, rising to Rs 4.62 lakh for the 11th and 12th standards. At Stonehill International School in Bangalore, which caters to expats’ kids, tuition for Indian children ranges from around US $7,000 to $19,000 (around Rs 4.4 lakh to Rs 12 lakh) annually, plus a $5,000 (around Rs 3 lakh) “development fee” and an extra Rs 1 lakh for food and transport.

The power dynamics do appear to be shifting within this “new ecology of expectations,” as coined by social scientist Shiv Visvanathan. These days, schools can’t call the shots unilaterally. Most principals feel keen pressure to anticipate a parent’s reaction to the smallest tweaks in scheduling or school recitals. It’s not just about installing security systems to soothe jangled nerves. One Mumbai-based administrator notes: “The parent is a client, and the child is a product.”

Putting the local in glocal

The aisles of any education fair offer a few moments of levity. Stroll past the signboard of AMC Brooklyn National Public School, and pause to ask a small question. “Do you know where Brooklyn is?” The question puzzles 29-year-old Neha Karanwal, who hails from Rajasthan and teaches 10th standard English at the school. “I don’t know where is Brooklyn. I know it is out of India. We are looking for that international thing only,” she replies.

Or eavesdrop on an encounter between a somber father and a garrulous representative from the Sharanya Narayani International School. She brandishes a list of school fees and speaks in a confidential tone. “I met with a parent the other day, and she wanted to pay ALL the fees for her child in advance, from nursery until the 10th standard. That’s the kind of commitment people have!” If true, that’s quite a pretty paisa for a brand new school that still needs to staff up for its first academic year in 2015. In mid-December the school solicited applications for every category of teacher, plus a librarian, a swimming coach, and marketing and accounting personnel.

What’s most striking in these aisles is the graphic absence of the foreign. No Benetton-type display of multicultural diversity can be found, no smiling foreign teachers or kids posing with their Indian counterparts. At most, one banner shows an Indian child peering at a large globe. At a December fair held at the swanky Vivanta by Taj hotel in Bangalore, the Chistiya International School banner was completely devoid of humans, as though a nuclear blast had emptied the school and all that remained was a spacious building.

Today, any school in India can label itself “international”. The word floats free of any government restriction, in a market primed to highlight the cachet of the global. At the less expensive end of the market, even modest outposts in Shimoga and Usilampatti are hoisting these signboards.

Many schools are hedging their bets by offering different curriculum options under the same roof. Again, the magician at Candor International School had it right: schools are waving multiple handkerchiefs. Alongside the International Baccalaureate (IB) or the Cambridge system (IGCSE), some schools also offer ICSE, ISC or CBSE. Shifting attitudes in the marketplace will determine the emphasis in the future. At Greenwood High in Bangalore, for example, roughly 1,000 students are enrolled in either the IGCSE or the IB, while another 2,000 students have opted for ICSE.

Institutions allow students to hop from one curriculum to another, at different stages in their education. Despite modest salaries, teachers also straddle various lesson plans, often furiously trying to keep up. “We are not getting the expected standard of teachers. We are forced to take them. They are compromises. But we are training them, we are developing their abilities,” says K Surendranath, general manager in Karnataka for Podar International School, part of a network that runs 78 schools in India.

Teacher turnover is a big problem, although most schools are loath to reveal attrition rates. Many sources contend that new school founders are willing to devote far more resources to fancy infrastructure than to improving salaries and training for teachers. “Tangibles are more attractive to consumers in India,” notes Rohit Tikmany, founder of 5thSeptember.com, a job portal for teachers. “They would rather spend money on the Italian marble in the school lobby.” (Beleaguered teachers can bite back at their former employers as anonymous sources for the school rankings published by Education World magazine.)

At the upper end of the market, it’s a transitional period. Some schools are hopping on the pricey bandwagon of the IB, which is swiftly winning converts in the US, Australia and China as a rigorous route to critical thinking. Its credo: “The IB promotes intercultural understanding and respect, not as an alternative to a sense of cultural and national identity, but as an essential part of life in the 21st century.” But it typically takes two to three years for any school to receive IB authorization, and a solid cohort of parents willing to the pay the price. The program features a host of expensive textbooks and teacher-training workshops in locales such as Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore. For example, obtaining a slot at an upcoming IB primary school teachers’ workshop requires $940 Singapore dollars (the equivalent of Rs 45,088). For Indian parents, it’s still largely unknown territory.

More familiar is the IGCSE, which usually takes schools a scant 12 weeks to acquire, and permits teachers to learn on the job. The price tag for IB learners tends to be at least two or three times higher than for IGCSE.

“Within all these ‘international’ schools, 60 to 70 percent of students are going for the national boards,” estimates Summiya Yasmeen, managing editor of Education World magazine.

“What norms are they following? It’s ridiculous,” says Vimala Ramachandran, professor of teacher management and development at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, in New Delhi. “You can’t have your primary section following an international board, then secondary switched to a national board, and switch back again. The more respected schools, the older ones, don’t do that.”

In one sense, the schools turning to IB or IGCSE remain minnows in the great sea of private education in India. The official count for IB is only 112 authorized schools throughout India, with 56 candidate schools in the pipeline. Meanwhile University of Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) counts 350 accredited schools, with an additional 60 schools in the pipeline. According to Krishna Kumar, professor of education at the University of Delhi, the expansion of international schools “is a sign of decay in India’s own school system, particularly the secondary school system.” But he also predicts that this trend “will mark the decay of the IB system. It becomes a brand, like any other.”

Yet such schools are grabbing whale-size attention for their fee structure, amenities and presumed social status. Their rate of expansion has even roiled The Association of International Schools of India (TAISI). “It’s going too fast. Basically, the kids will suffer,” predicts Anu Monga, chairperson of TAISI and Head of School at Bangalore International School, one of the older schools on the scene. Monga argues that the IB and CIE should move more cautiously, in order to measure whether the schools can really follow these programs. (Lest anyone assume such comments are merely sour grapes, Monga reports that every level in her school is wait-listed during this admissions season.)

Given the proliferation of chains of institutions, it’s easy enough for one school to lay claim to the word “international” even if only a sister school provides IB. That’s true of the tech-entranced Pearson Schools. Only one of 24 schools listed on their website offers IB – despite the chain’s claims to produce “future-ready global citizens.” (Pearson officials declined to comment.) “Ethical marketing is something of a utopia,” notes Ashish Sachde, a Mumbai-based education consultant.

Check out the Global Indian International School, proud of its double-whammy moniker. Its campus in Singapore enrolls pupils from 52 nationalities, who choose between IGCSE and IB, according to Sumit Taxali, senior manager for national admissions. In Bangalore and Noida, however, it’s a solidly Indian student body, all wedded to the CBSE, instructed by Indian teachers. When I ask, “Would you call this false advertising?” Taxali looks horrified. “Absolutely not,” he replies. “We have a global presence.” He points to video-conferencing as a good way to adopt teaching methods from colleagues in Singapore.

Many regular schools, in fact, are experimenting with ways to adopt a more international scope. For example, The British Council promotes an International School Award. It’s not a competition, but a program designed to lead Indian classrooms to interact with counterparts in Africa or Mexico or the UK or elsewhere, sometimes communicating directly through a secure on-line network. Kavita Anand, executive director of the Mumbai-based education network Adhyayan, observes that the ISA “has begun to go viral across the country. State governments are taking it up.”

On their own, schools are also figuring out lesson plans that compare different transport systems, probe global warming, discuss child labor, or focus on different forms of democracy in India, America and the UK. The Candor website says that the school holds “candid discussions about sensitive local and global issues like racism, discrimination, human rights, terrorism, and honestly analyzes our own attitudes to these issues.”

Money matters

However, this fluid definition of “international” can also generate angst. Walking out of education fairs with a pile of brochures, young couples wonder how to make sense of it all. “Are schools talking about “international,” or are they really doing it? It could just be a marketing strategy,” muses 33-year old Amit Sharma, a team leader for Accenture. He and his wife, Shivi Jawalia, came to the fair at Vivanta by Taj with their two-year-old son in tow. They both experienced sticker shock, terming the fees “huge”. “When people are planning for a second kid, the biggest thing is, will they be able to do it, with education being so costly? Everyone is in a dilemma right now,” says Sharma.

Loan companies are eager to target couples just like them. “We plan to enter the K-12 education finance market in the very near future,” says Neeraj Saxena, CEO of Avanse Education loans. “Annual fees at these schools are on an upswing and will continue to increase.” Meanwhile, parents aligned with the new Forum for Fairness in Education have started to swap information on school fees through a new mobile application. The accent on money has angered a number of parents, even those who can afford to pay more. One mother says she was very turned off by the instant, haughty recitation of fees when she called one international school in Hyderabad. “That is bullshit. That is real estate people talking,” fumes Sirisha Varanasi.

Schools blithely promise a route to overseas scholarships, but there won’t be enough to go around, especially not at the undergraduate level. With many schools targeting the aspirations of the upper middle class – rather than just the super-wealthy of yesteryear – debt or disappointment may loom large. According to one recent study, the average total charges per year at a private, four-year institution in the United States amount to US $42,419. In other words, even at 2014 prices, parents would need around Rs 1 crore handy for a four-year degree if their child does not receive a scholarship. Meanwhile, chances are dimming for UK-bound students to work there and pay off loans after graduation.

The New York-based Institute of International Education has bad news. The overwhelming majority of Indian students in the US go there for graduate degrees, precisely because host institutions offer more funds at that level. “For there to be more scholarships for Indian students to pursue a bachelor’s degree overseas, the Indian government would probably need to consider investing in such scholarships, similar to how other countries have done,” says Rajika Bhandari, deputy vice-president for research and evaluation at IIE. She added that it was “not likely” that the number of Indian undergraduates would catch up to the Chinese undergraduate population in the US anytime soon. However, www.bigfuture.org – a website run by the College Board, which administers the SATs – can help students and their parents check on the availability of financial aid for international students.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has refrained from approving programs that would allow more frugal students to study for two years at home and then two years abroad, such as the New York University program in Abu Dhabi. This has led to considerable disappointment, both among overseas universities and their potential domestic partners. That leaves the newbie private Indian universities, such as Ashoka, OP Jindal, Amity, and Azim Premji, to hone their appeal to IB and IGCSE grads as a safe haven for critical thinking.

An identity crisis

Like other parents, Sharma and Jawalia wonder how they can predict whether or not their son, still so young, would like to study overseas after a stint at one of these schools. “If he is not going out of the country, then what is going to happen?” asks Jawalia. According to IB officials, 46 percent of students in India who completed an IB program requested a transcript that could be submitted to an Indian university.

View photos Activities at Thakur International School, Mumbai. More

But are international schools the only ticket to studying abroad? There is some good news for those whose parents can’t afford the expanding roster of “international” schools, but still hope to see their children study overseas. According to Lisa Jain, India representative of the College Board, “there is no reason to believe that students from CBSE schools do not perform as well as their counterparts in international schools…over the past several decades, thousands of Indian students studying Indian curriculum, have gained admission into some of the world’s best universities.”

At its best, international education in India does encourage more holistic learning. Rather than work in silos, teachers in different disciplines must collaborate to examine the same thing in different ways: say, the physics and aesthetics of the Tower of Pisa. At its worst, it leans toward a series of mismatches – between teacher and curriculum, or between a student’s present course of study and her future plans. A student with an IB diploma may find it mentally difficult to adjust to a conventional Indian college or university, even if she gains admission. It’s a methodological mismatch, a shift from fork to spoon.

Beyond this lies the potential impact of social isolation. International school expansion is “a symptom of the stratification of society, and it reinforces it as well,” says Usha Rajaram, an English professor working on a team to build the liberal arts curriculum at Azim Premji University. Will a silver spoon simply replace the stainless steel model?

For now, some observers are more troubled by the odds that graduates of “international” schools in India will become estranged from their own country. While the IB does require some form of community action, critics argue that collecting donations for old age homes or providing notebooks to impoverished children in adjacent villages is a form of charity, not true engagement.

“The kids are here, but they don’t know much of what is under their own feet. Wherever they go, they are highly cocooned,” says Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, founder of the Indian Institute of Geographical Studies, and a teacher who has been employed by two international schools and has given workshops at seven others.

“Real intellectual growth occurs when you relate to an environment where you are growing up,” maintains Kumar at the University of Delhi. “If you are oriented to a ‘global market’ like Singapore or the UK, your education will remain glossy and superficial.” Memo to principals: for a truly organic education, don’t stop with fresh vegetables.

Margot Cohen is a writer from New York. Her interest in India follows previous reporting stints in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.