The Turkish division of The British School Istanbul group, which has been running for almost 40 years and has been under its current ownership since 2000. The group is split in two: an international division, holding The British International School at the Zekeriyaköy Forest Campus and The British International STEAM School at the Etiler STEAM Campus, and a Turkish division operating under the name BIS Schools, which delivers the Turkish national curriculum with an international perspective. The Bahçeşehir campus belongs to the Turkish division. Teaching leans on play and project work, and the primary programme is built spirally, with concepts introduced and revisited at greater depth year by year. Parent-teacher meetings are held in October and April, and progress reports go out twice a year, in December and June.
Key facts
Programmes
Cambridge · National programme
Languages of instruction
Turkish
Languages taught
English, French, Spanish
About the fees The school publishes no fees on any page. The only route to the figures is the enquiry form in the admissions section, which is also where a campus visit is arranged.
Admissions Admission runs through the enquiry form on the site, which is also how campus visits and procedures are arranged. The admissions policy is published as a page of its own. School buses have their own section and are signed up for separately.
Stages and year groups The Bahçeşehir campus runs a preschool level, a primary school for ages 6 to 9 and a middle school for ages 10 to 13. In legal terms the campus is a primary, middle and Anatolian high school, but the high school page on the site carries no content at all. From grade 5 students may add French or Spanish as a second foreign language.
Address Pazartürk Cd No: 12, Başakşehir, İstanbul
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · authorised programmeBahçeşehir Koleji · school is part of the networkThe school is listed in the open Cambridge International registry as a registered centre. It names no Cambridge stages of its own, neither on the academic programmes page nor on the level pages: those describe only the Turkish national curriculum of the Ministry of National Education. No centre number appears on the site either.
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
CambridgeCambridge International Education
Part of the University of Cambridge. It allows a school to teach the Cambridge programmes and to enter pupils for the exams. There are four stages and they are authorised separately: primary, lower secondary, IGCSE and A Level. If the stages are known they are named in the line below; if that line is missing, the school does not publish them, and the Cambridge registry does not show stages either - it gives only the name of the centre, the country and whether private candidates are accepted. Cambridge calls what it does registration rather than accreditation, and the network holds about ten thousand schools.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Which stages - from the early years programme for three-year-olds up to A-Level - this school is approved for is not stated here.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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.
Bahçeşehir Kolejischool network
The second school brand of the Bahçeşehir Uğur Eğitim Kurumları group (BUEK): its owner is the same as the owner of Uğur Okulları - Enver Yücel, and these are two brands of one group, not two networks. Alongside the schools the group has Bahçeşehir University and the BAU universities abroad. The network gives the number of campuses differently on its own pages, and we give both: 144 on the home page and 146 on the campuses page. The campuses stand across the whole country, from Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir to Batman, Trabzon and Ordu; besides the ordinary campuses the network holds science and technology high schools, Bilim ve Teknoloji Liseleri. The network issues no accreditation of its own.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.
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
·Librarynot stated on the website
✓Catering
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Campus: Four campuses in the Turkish division; this one stands in Başakşehir. Clubs run inside the weekly timetable, after school and at weekends, and mix students of different ages.
Clubs and activities: list on the school website
Teaching staff
The school publishes neither the number of its teachers nor their qualifications.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
✓CCTV
✓Security staff
✓Access control
·Nurse or medical roomnot stated on the website
·Counsellornot stated on the website
✓Child protection policy
·Staff trainingnot stated on the website
·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%)60 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 data80 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)85 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data65 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 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
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