A private day school opened in 1996 by the Hisar Educational Foundation, now marking its thirtieth year. It teaches 1,722 students from pre-school to grade 12, with seven students per teacher. The base is the Turkish Ministry of National Education curriculum, with College Board Advanced Placement courses on top; the school is an AP exam centre and its students sit the exams on site. It names more than 120 student clubs, which all students join during school hours, and at high school level students set up and run clubs themselves.
Key facts
Tuition
≈ $18 836–37 569 a year
909 314–1.8 million TRY
Programmes
AP · National programme
Languages of instruction
Turkish
About the fees From the school's own announcement for the 2026-2027 year: from 909,314 lira for grade 4 to 1,813,636 lira for the preparatory year and grade 9. The figures exclude VAT; with VAT at 10 per cent they run from 1,000,245 to 1,995,000 lira. In pre-school and primary grades 1 to 4 the fee covers tuition, lunch and two snacks; in middle school grades 5 to 8 it covers tuition only, with lunch and snacks offered as options; in high school it covers tuition only. Books, learning materials, uniforms, sportswear and transport are excluded at every stage. A 10 per cent sibling discount applies for each further child, and five payment plans are offered, from a single payment to instalments.
Admissions Admission runs in four steps. First a pre-application form on the site for the relevant grade. Then the application itself, which differs by stage: a lottery for pre-school and grade 1, a recognition and assessment process for grades 2 to 4, and an examination for middle and high school. This step runs through the school portal, with login details sent by the registration office; the applicant's identity document is uploaded and the lottery, examination or assessment fee is paid.
Stages and year groups The full K-12 route in four stages: pre-school, primary school, middle school and high school. Fees follow the same stages: pre-school with two age groups, primary grades 1 to 4, middle grades 5 to 8, and a high school with a preparatory year plus four years.
Address Göktürk Merkez Mahallesi, İstanbul Caddesi No: 3, Eyüpsultan, İstanbul 34077
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
College Board · authorised programmeCIS · accreditationNEASC · accreditationThe school appears in the College Board course ledger and states itself that Advanced Placement courses run in addition to the ministry curriculum, with students sitting the exams at the school, which acts as an AP exam centre and publishes its registration dates. CIS and NEASC accredit the whole school and are both named on a dedicated accreditations page. The school holds no IB or Cambridge entries, in the registers or on its own site.
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
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 →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 →NEASCNew England Association of Schools and Colleges
An American accreditation working since 1885. For international schools it uses an approach where the visitors look first at live lessons rather than at folders of paperwork: the team works in the school for about a week. It is the only one here whose public directory honestly separates accredited schools from candidates.
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 →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 hall
·Laboratoriesnot stated on the website
·Theatre or assembly hallnot stated on the website
✓Library
✓Catering
✓School transport
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Also on site: Makerspace
Campus: The campus is in Göktürk, on the northern edge of Istanbul. Besides the school buildings it holds an innovation centre, an information strategies centre, a writing skills centre, a humanities and social sciences centre, a university and career counselling centre, a library and a sports centre.
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 staffnot stated on the website
·Access controlnot stated on the website
·Nurse or medical roomnot stated on the website
✓Counsellor
✓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%)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 data65 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)95 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data80 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data55 "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 8 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. 1996 · Private