← Back to the rankingIstanbul International School
Istanbul, Turkey · est. 1997 · Private
Illustration · Istanbul
The school grew out of a bilingual pre-school opened in 1997; a primary school followed in 2002. It stands in the green district of Çamlıca on the Asian side of Istanbul and runs two campuses within easy reach of each other: Campus A takes children from age 4 to grade 7, Campus B grades 8 to 12. It started with 12 students and, in the school's own words, had passed 470 by 2018. Over sixty nationalities sit in the student body and the teaching staff comes from twenty countries. The curriculum is Cambridge from primary through high school; separately the school names approval and inspection by the Turkish Ministry of National Education and membership of the International Schools Association, which holds consultative status with UNESCO. The primary programme is organised into three areas - Environmental Studies, Life Skills and Expressive Arts - with Turkish taught inside Life Skills alongside English and mathematics.
Key facts
Tuition
$21 500–32 750 a year
Programmes
Cambridge · Primary, Lower Secondary, IGCSE, A-Level
Languages of instruction
English
About the fees The range runs from Early Years to grade 12. Fees include tuition, lunch, books and materials, assessment and V.A.T., so the published figures are the ones with tax; no pre-tax figure is given. They also cover the minimum number of Cambridge examinations the school requires at the end of grades 5, 8, 10, 11 and 12. Any payment already made for placement tests is deducted from the annual fee. Paying the whole amount in advance earns a 5 per cent discount. The instalment plan has four payments, the first of which is half of the total.
Admissions Every applicant is assessed by a school counsellor; applicants to the high school also sit a placement test of readiness. Year groups are matched by age, and the school warns that the content of its grade 1 does not necessarily match Year 2 in the UK or grade 1 in the US curriculum - the detail is worked through at the registration meeting.
Stages and year groups Levels run from Early Years for ages 4 to 5 up to grade 12. Primary covers grades 1 to 5, which the school itself equates to Years 2 to 6 of the Cambridge curriculum; middle school is grades 6 to 8; IGCSE fills grades 9 and 10, and AS and A Level grades 11 and 12. In grade 11 a student takes four AS level subjects and may drop one at the start of grade 12 with the permission of the High School Principal. The school calls its levels Grades rather than Years and keeps an equivalence table on the site for families.
Address Turistik Çamlıca Cad. No 20, 34692 Üsküdar, İstanbul
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · Primary, Lower Secondary, IGCSE, A-Level · authorised programmeThe school is listed in the open Cambridge International registry, among the centres that enter private candidates. Its own wording is that Cambridge has accredited Istanbul International School as an institution to deliver its full school programmes and that the school is also an accredited exam centre. No centre number is published on the 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
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. At this school: Primary (ages 5-11), Lower Secondary (ages 11-14), IGCSE (ages 14-16), A-Level (ages 16-18). Primary is the primary stage, ages 5 to 11: English, mathematics and science to Cambridge syllabuses. At the end of the stage a school may run the optional Checkpoint test, which is marked in Cambridge. Lower Secondary is the middle stage, ages 11 to 14, with the same optional Checkpoint test at the end. IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate. A-Level is the senior years, and their results are what British and many other universities admit on.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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
✓Laboratories
✓Theatre or assembly hall
✓Library
✓Catering
✓School transport
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Also on site: Sports ground or field · Playground
Campus: Two campuses close to each other in Çamlıca. Campus A holds twenty classrooms, a multi purpose room and a vegetable garden; Campus B holds twelve classrooms and a recreation room.
Teaching staff
The school publishes neither the number of its teachers nor their qualifications.
Safety and wellbeing from the school's official website
The school says nothing on its website about security, medical care or pupil support.
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%)95 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 data55 Accreditation and verifiability (10%)85 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data55 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data90 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