← Back to homeİSTEK Belde Okulları
Istanbul, Turkey · est. 1986 · Private
Illustration · Istanbul
İSTEK Belde Okulları is a campus in Kuzguncuk on the Nakkaştepe hill, opened in 1986 as a high school and grown into five schools: a kindergarten, a primary school, a middle school, an Anatolian high school and a science high school. The grounds cover 11,866 square meters, about twelve dönüm: a conference hall for 450, an indoor sports hall, a semi-Olympic pool, physics, chemistry, biology and science laboratories, soundproofed music rooms with a recording studio, fine art workshops, a library with a media center and an infirmary. The primary school runs the IB PYP program, authorized in the 2018-2019 school year. Lessons are taught in two languages: from grade one children spend 24 hours a week with Turkish and foreign teachers of English, and German and Spanish are taught as second languages. The teaching staff is published by name for every stage - more than a hundred people in all, including seven counseling psychologists. There are more than twenty clubs, from astronomy and robotics to a pop-rock orchestra and a Model UN club, plus eighteen sports teams. The school names neither its tuition, nor the number of its students, nor a list of graduates’ universities on its pages.
Key facts
Languages of instruction
Turkish, English
Languages taught
German, Spanish
About the fees The school does not publish its price as text: the “Kayıt Ücretleri” page on the network’s site gives, for each campus, only a link to a cloud folder holding a document.
Admissions Children are taken into kindergarten and grade one on a school readiness test and an introductory interview with the child; into grades 2, 3 and 4 on an interview and a readiness assessment; into grade five on the İSTEK exam and an interview; into the middle grades on the school’s own assessment, a conversation with a psychologist and a foreign language exam; into the preparatory year and grade nine of the Anatolian high school on a conversation with a psychologist, the İSTEK exam and the result of the national LGS exam; into the science high school on a conversation with a psychologist and the LGS result.
Stages and year groups Grades from the preparatory group to the final grade of high school. The campus runs five schools at one address: a kindergarten, a primary school, a middle school, an Anatolian high school and a science high school.
Address Kuzguncuk Mah. Gümüşyolu Cad. Rasimağa Sk. No:7, Nakkaştepe, 34664 Üsküdar, İstanbul
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · PYP · authorised programmeCollege Board · authorised programmeİSTEK Vakfı Okulları · school is part of the networkschool 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
IBInternational Baccalaureate
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
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: PYP (ages 3-12). PYP is the primary stage, ages 3 to 12. It is not a set of subjects but a frame for the whole school: learning is built around lines of inquiry, and there are no exams at the end.
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. Authorisation here runs a year at a time: the register lists the school for the 2025-2026 school year.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →İSTEK Vakfı Okullarıschool network
The schools of the Istanbul foundation İSTEK İstanbul Eğitim ve Kültür Vakfı, established by Bedrettin Dalan in 1985; the first school of the foundation its pages name as the Semiha Şakır high school in Göztepe. The foundation exists separately from the schools and holds, besides them, Yeditepe University, opened in 1996: that is how it describes its own chain - from kindergarten to university and to work. A school, for the foundation, means a separately licensed institution of one stage, and at the high school level it divides them by type as well; its own count is 22 kindergartens, 22 primary schools, 22 middle schools, 20 high schools and 14 Fen high schools, that is, about a hundred institutions, and this is a count by stage on the same campuses rather than by address. The number of kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools is the same - 22 each - while there are two fewer high schools.
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 pool
✓Sports hall
✓Laboratories
✓Theatre or assembly hall
✓Library
·Cateringnot stated on the website
·School transportnot stated on the website
·Boardingnot stated on the website
Also on site: Art studio
Campus: 11,866 square meters in Nakkaştepe; a conference hall for 450, an indoor sports hall, a semi-Olympic pool, physics, chemistry, biology and science laboratories, project rooms, rooms for mathematics, Turkish and social studies, a library with a media center, dining halls with the school’s own food production and canteens, soundproofed music rooms with a recording studio, fine art workshops, an infirmary.
Clubs and activities (21): Astronomy · Basketball · Football · Computing · Robotics · Chess · Table tennis · Art · Folk dance · Contemporary dance · Dance · Drama · Theatre · Cookery · Eco-School and ecology · Pop-rock orchestra · Social responsibility · Photography · Science and technology · Model United Nations · Community work
Summer camp: the school runs its own camp; whether it takes children from outside is not stated on the website
In summer the Akademi İstanbul summer school works in the campus buildings.
Teaching staff from the school's official website
·Teachers listed by namenot published
·Teacher qualificationsnot stated
✓Number of teachers109
·Students per teacher or class sizenot stated
The staff is published by name in a separate table for each stage, with the subject or the position given.
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 roomAn infirmary on campus; the health service employs a pediatrician and school nurses, and in urgent cases a child is taken to the nearest hospital accompanied by a nurse.
✓Counsellor
·Child protection policynot stated on the website
·Staff trainingnot stated on the website
·Anti-bullying policynot stated on the website
Security on all the grounds is kept by the network’s own service, with personnel licensed under Law 5188; day and night posts, indoor and outdoor cameras recording around the clock, every entry and exit logged electronically, and students passing through with a personal card.
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%)72 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%)90 Teaching staff (10%) scored on disclosed data70 Facilities (10%) scored on disclosed data85 Clubs and activities (8%) scored on disclosed data78 Value for money (6%) scored at the median64 "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