A private full-day school in Sarıyer. The journey started in 1997 in Akatlar, on the site of what is now the primary school building; the high school was established in 1998 and its first students graduated in June 2011. The school reports more than 1600 students of different ages and close to 550 teachers and colleagues, so that second figure covers staff as well as teaching faculty. It runs as one institution across four campuses rather than as a group: preschool in Bahçeköy and Levent, primary school in Akatlar and Sarıyer, middle school in Bahçeköy and Sarıyer, and high school in Bahçeköy. The curriculum is the school's own Açı Academic Program, whose main language of instruction is Turkish while the courses preparing students for universities abroad are taught in English. Grades 9 and 10 follow the Ministry of National Education curriculum; grades 11 and 12 add electives, AP courses for students heading abroad, and support courses for the Turkish university exams for those staying.
Key facts
Programmes
AP · National programme
Languages of instruction
Turkish, English
Admissions Enrolment runs against quotas the school sets itself each year. Families can attend the introductory meetings held through the year and book a separate conversation with the school administration, online or face to face. If the grade applied for is full, the school says so directly and offers a waiting list. No entrance examination is named in its description of admission.
Stages and year groups A full ladder from preschool to the final year: the programme covers ages three through the end of high school. Preschool sits in Bahçeköy and Levent, primary school in Akatlar and Sarıyer, middle school in Bahçeköy and Sarıyer, and high school only in Bahçeköy. The Bahçeköy high school campus hosts two schools at one address, Açı Anatolian High School and Açı Social Sciences High School. The school does not state how many classes run in parallel or how many students sit in one class.
Address Kemer Mah. Şehit Cengiz Topel Cad. No: 2, 34473 Bahçeköy, Sarıyer, İstanbul
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
CIS · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeThe school is listed in the CIS registry as accredited and in the College Board AP Course Ledger for the 2025-2026 year under code 696342. It has no Cambridge or IB stages: neither registry carries a record for it, and the school itself claims no such programme. Its own site puts the CIS link first in the header.
school is in an official registryconfirmed by a school document, by membership or by taking part in a networkclaimed by the school, no confirmation, not counted in the scoreGuide to all organisations → What stands behind each entry
CISCouncil of International Schools
It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →College BoardCollege Board, the AP programme
An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →AP
Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
National programme
The state school programme of the country the school stands in: it is set by that country's ministry of education, which also licenses the school and awards the leaving certificate. That certificate is used for entry to local universities, and abroad it is matched to the local one.
What this means for this school. This entry does not count towards the score, and that is deliberate. Every lawful school in a country works to the national programme, so on its own it tells one school apart from no other - unlike the French, German or Russian programmes, which are carried abroad and confirmed by the register of their organisation. We show it because a parent needs to know what programme their child is taught and what certificate the child will get. Counting it would lift the whole ranking at once and still tell nobody apart.
Exams and destinations from the school's official website
The school publishes nothing about where its leavers go: no share going on to university, no exam results, no list of universities.
Facilities from the school's official website
·Swimming poolnot stated on the website
·Sports hallnot stated on the website
·Laboratoriesnot stated on the website
·Theatre or assembly hallnot stated on the website
✓Library
✓Catering
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Campus: Four campuses across Sarıyer, Akatlar and Levent. Cleaning, catering, security and maintenance on all of them are run by the contractor ISS Facility Management, with scheduled works and repairs carried out during the holidays.
Teaching staff
The school publishes neither the number of its teachers nor their qualifications.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
·CCTVnot stated on the website
✓Security staffSecurity staff are posted at every campus, and the school names the headcount site by site: 4 at the Akatlar primary school, 3 at the Bahçeköy high school, 2 at the Kemerburgaz preschool, 2 at the Levent preschool and 8 at the Sarıyer campus that holds preschool, primary and middle school.
·Access controlnot stated on the website
·Nurse or medical roomnot stated on the website
·Counsellornot stated on the website
✓Child protection policy
✓Staff training
·Anti-bullying policynot stated on the website
Reviews
No reviews yet. The community rating counts towards the score once a school has five verified reviews - until then we do not show a zero, so as not to mislead.
Criteria breakdown criterion weight in brackets
Academics and programmes (16%)63 Community rating (16%)no dataparent reviews are needed: the criterion switches on at the fifth verified one Exams and destinations (12%) scored on disclosed data55 Safety and wellbeing (12%) scored on disclosed data75 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)90 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data70 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data55 Value for money (6%) scored at the median65 "Scored on disclosed data" stands where we count only what the school has written about itself on its own site: exams and destinations, safety and wellbeing, teaching staff, facilities, clubs and activities. A low score here means the school does not write about this, not that the school does not have it: a school with good security and a sparse site will score low. A school can fill in its profile, and the score will be counted again.
The score is counted from 7 of the 9 criteria.Only those with checkable data count: programmes and accreditations from official registers, the fee from a published price list. Where it says "scored on the median", the school has no data and the middle of the list is put in its place, so that a gap gives no advantage. Admissions, teaching staff and reviews come in as their data arrives.
The full methodology → Similar schools in the country
Istanbul, Turkey · est. 1997 · Private