BENGALURU: With the pandemic and the consequent international travel curbs in place, many international schools in Bengaluru catering to expats and people of Indian origin (PIO) have seen a dip in enrollment of foreign nationals.
The schools said many families have been unable to reach India due to the restrictions.
Many expat families based in India had opted to leave after the first lockdown was lifted in June 2020.
“Due to the nature of the growing East Asian automotive industry, in and around Bangalore, Canadian International School gets a portion of Japanese and South Korean students.
When travel bans were initially put in place, the eastern skies were virtually closed making it difficult for anyone to travel to India,” said Shweta Sastri, MD , Canadian International School, Bengaluru.
Travel ban hits recruitment of teachers to int’l schoolsWe have had many students partially withdraw, intending to return after one year, and as that year is now ending, just a handful of students have expressed interest to return,” Shweta added.
The school has 50% foreign nationals in its student and teacher community.
Other schools in the city have been witnessing similar trend because the international borders remain closed.
“There has been a dip in admissions.
Physical schools have opened abroad or the expats have gone back and resumed work from their respective countries.
We do have international students who are on standby for the physical schools to open here.
Our existing international students are attending school virtually from their respective countries as of now,” said Sarojini Rao, principal, Indus International School.
About 40% of students in Indus are foreign students from across 33 countries.
New admissions cancelledInventure Academy, which has 13% students from other countries, said 20 of their 200+ new admissions have been deferred or cancelled.
“Out of this, 50% are international students relocating from the US, the UK, Switzerland, Singapore and Dubai,” said Nooraine Fazal, founder, Inventure Academy.
“People have decided not to move to India at all or have deferred admission because of the sheer number of Covid cases in India, and their lack of confidence in the ability our system to be able to handle the scale of the pandemic.
Foreign media coverage has not been very positive.
This is complemented by what people have heard about what is happening from colleagues, friends and family have scared people.
Opportunities in countries like the US are growing due to the speed in which they have vaccinated their population, and are returning to normalcy,” she said.
Shweta said normalcy is slowly returning in other countries, prompting expats to go back.
“We have seen families leave Bengaluru this year to their home countries of the US, the UK, France, and other EU countries, because they have made in-person education for their children a priority.
Parents are willing to split their families or risk career advancement, so kids can attend schools abroad,” she said.
For international schools, travel ban has impacted teacher recruitment too.
“There has been a dip in international teachers due to visa issues.
A few teachers had accepted offers for this year, but had to drop out,” Rao added.
Canadian International School said some teachers, who were not able to reach India, continued teaching from different parts of the world.