Ebenezer International School, Bangalore

The unique selling proposition of EISB (estb.2007) is Dr. Abraham Ebenezer, who served as principal of Bishop Cotton Boys for 13 years prior to laying down the seals of office in 2006

It’s a measure of the insistent demand for high-quality education, that the once garden city of Bangalore (pop.7 million) boasts an estimated 3,000 primary-cum-secondary schools including over ten ‘international’ schools affiliated with, and offering the syllabuses and curriculums of offshore examination boards such as the International Baccalaureate Organisation and the Cambridge International Examinations. To this list add Ebenezer International School, Bangalore (EISB), a new K-12 internationally benchmarked school affiliated with the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) board, UK. On its ergonomically designed 12.5 acre campus contiguous to Electronic City, the hub of the city’s high-profile IT and related industries, EISB offers world-class facilities and contemporary pedagogies to its 600 boy and girl students.

The USP (unique selling proposition) of EISB, which admitted its first batch of 350 students in 2007, is contained in the name of this K-12 school which currently has an aggregate enrollment of 500 day scholars and 100 boarders from across India and six foreign countries. Dr. Abraham Ebenezer served as principal of Bangalore’s Bishop Cotton Boys’ School (BCBS — estb.1865), recently voted south India’s most respected day school in the EducationWorld Survey of Schools 2008, for 13 years prior to laying down the seals of office in 2006, to promote EISB.

A postgraduate of Mysore University who was awarded a doctorate by the International University, Missouri, USA, Ebenezer began his career as a government sub-registrar in 1971 and two years later signed up with the Ramnarayan Chellaram College, Bangalore where he taught history for over a decade (1973-85). In 1985 he returned to government, and rose to the position of deputy director of collegiate education before he was called upon in 1993 by the Church of South India, to take charge of the then 128-year-old Bishop Cotton Boys as principal. During his 13-year stint as principal, he transformed the school into an academically frontline secondary institution providing globally bench-marked ICT (information communication technologies)-enabled K-12 education.

Now in the new millennium, Dr. Ebenezer has invested the sum total of his experience as a government educrat and hands-on principal in EISB, promoted with a project outlay of Rs.65 crore, of which Rs.45 crore has already been spent. “Infrastructure and teachers are the body and soul of great schools,” says Dr. Ebenezer. “Therefore we have spared no expense to provide the most contemporary, globally comparable infrastructure, the highlights of which are our state-of-the-art library, laboratories and lavatories, the quality of which determine world-class academic institutions. Yet life has been breathed into the body of EISB by our 112 handpicked and carefully selected teachers from thousands of unsolicited applications I received from the best in Indian school education.”

Inevitably, in keeping with the best sports education traditions of BCBS, where he served as principal for over a decade, Ebenezer has invested considerable care and consideration in sports and extra-curricular facilities at EISB. A two-storey, 12,120 sq.ft fully-equipped indoor sports and fitness centre christened Olympia, features an international standard swimming pool on the ground floor. The first floor offers a modern, well-equipped gym and fitness centre, and on the second floor provision has been made for badminton, squash and billiards. Moreover the indoor sports facilities provided within Olympia are supplemented by the outdoor games provision made by the Sports Academy for cricket, football, hockey, baseball and lawn tennis.

Co-curricular education at EISB is concentrated in the school’s Tagore Heritage Center of Performing and Fine Arts. The centre offers training programmes in Indian classical dance, vocal classical music (Hindustani and Carnatic) and classical instrumental music (tabla and violin); western classical music (vocal and piano); painting and sculpture; yoga and meditation. “In EISB we are fully committed to providing holistic, balanced education to our children. Therefore sports and the performing and fine arts are integrated into the school’s curriculum,” says Ebenezer.

Like Bishop Cotton Boys, EISB is a day-cum- residential institution with the school’s 100 boarders, including 25 girl students, in a separate residential block. Boarders are housed in spacious, well-ventilated rooms on a twin or three-sharing basis, under the supervision of residential house masters and mistresses trained to provide pastoral care.

Two years on, with EISB running smoothly on track, Dr. Ebenezer, who recently (November 26) received the Derozio Award 2008 of the Delhi-based CISCE for exemplary service to education and human enrichment,is in the process of drawing up ambitious plans for the future. Backed by heavyweight investors and banks, within the next five years, he proposes to promote four greenfield K-12 schools modelled after EISB — two more in Bangalore and one each in Pune and Hyderabad, even as he is mulling over his response to an invitation from Dubai.

“The demand for high-quality K-12 education is growing by leaps and bounds. Within Indian society there is awareness of the high importance of school education, as it prepares children to avail the full benefit of higher education, and indeed for life. And currently the number of K-12 schools offering world-class education in a fast globalising world is far less than required,” says Ebenezer who has already registered an Ebenezer Foundation (corpus: Rs.1 crore) to provide scholarships to poor, deserving children and is all set to promote a teachers training college under the aegis of the foundation.

Quite clearly this committed educator is determined to throw the full weight of his accumulated experience into raising the bar of Indian secondary education.

Dilip Thakore (Bangalore)