Manchester Global School: My New Home Away From Home

Returning to India is a heartwarming and exciting opportunity to resume a life of colour, flavour, adventure, and life that few countries globally offer. The buzz of humanity from when you land at the airport to the sounds and smells of the colourful surroundings all make India an amazing place to call home, and Manchester Global School very much feels like my home away from home even before the doors have officially opened to students.

A Strong Match

From my first interactions with Dr. Kondal and the board, the common threads of my life and career with the vision and inspiration for MGS made this feel like an opportunity that was aligned meticulously by the hands of fate. Being born so close to Manchester and visiting the industrious and bustling city where my mother and two of my siblings attended colleges and universities frequently as a child meant that my understanding of the background to the origins of the vision had a uniquely close perspective. My childhood spent visiting relatives in the industrial towns of northwest England where Dr. Kondal and his family have spent so much time meant we had a lot in common.

In addition to those immediate connections, my 16 years as an IB educator with six of them spent here in India at Oberoi International School (where my final class of graduates gained the 5th highest average IB Diploma results in all of India) and a six-year spell as a leader in one of the top four most expensive, exclusive boarding schools in the world, at College Alpine Beau Soleil meant that I had exactly the right balance of experiences in premium academic and boarding schools to be able to invest myself deeply in the vision that Dr. Konda l and the board have for Manchester Global School.

So with that knowledge, that my own very personal and extensive experience would equip me with an understanding of the community, the challenges, and most importantly the kind of experiences we will deliver, I packed my bags and arrived excitedly in Hyderabad at the very beginning of October.

Jumping Straight Into the Role

Not being someone who likes to waste time, my very first weekend was spent in Delhi with Dr. Kondal and Mr. Sudheer at an education fair for boarding schools. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear them explain their vision to prospective parents and students so that I could quickly involve myself in the admissions process. Since then, I have been part of the team to visit Guwahati, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai over the last 6 weeks as part of our admissions marketing campaign. Introducing families to our spectacular 20-acre campus with some of the best facilities I have ever seen in a modern-day school project - including our world-class sports facilities and even our very own planetarium - using our own set of virtual reality goggles has been incredibly fun.

Supporting Dr. Kondal and the team on sight providing insight and feedback into the final stages of building and decoration work has also been hugely satisfying. Providing ideas about furniture, discussing decisions about colour schemes and menu choices help to bring the excitement of a brand new campus to life on a daily basis.

Active Admissions

Without a doubt, the most exciting element of my new role is meeting the prospective students and their families, from the tiny-tots applying to our nursery all the way up to the prospective MYP Grade 9 students looking forward to being our initial ‘senior' class has provided me with the chance to find out what clubs and activities they want. Those initial meetings are hopefully for most families, just the first of what will be many conversations with me and the leadership in the school. And having already met somewhere close to 250 families with an interest and having secured around 50 admissions in the opening few days, it is a very, very busy time for me and our admissions team.

An Opportunity to Create a Learning Community

Creating a vibrant learning culture originates from the vision of one or a few human beings with a common goal, but it needs all the members of the community to invest in that culture with a similarly positive mindset. Using that vision as a seed to grow a tree-like community with a strong trunk and branches, but where every leaf collects sunlight to produce the energy that the whole community can grow and flourish is such an exciting opportunity and to be the IB Principal who shoulders the responsibility of bringing together the right families, the right educators, and the right support team to make the IB part of this tree grow bigger and stronger than all the other trees in the jungle of international schools in India is a fabulous honour for me.

Looking Forward

In my upcoming blog posts, I will share with you more about how I am looking for and recruiting the best teachers in India and around the world for MGS along with more about the admissions process and the cognitive ability testing we use for our admissions assessment. I will also share more about the importance of a strong and active extracurricular life for every student, in order to maximise their likelihood of academic success as well as more about the university admissions processes in India and around the world, that we will be ultimately preparing our students for.

If you wish to engage in further discussion or offer feedback on my blog posts, then please feel free to write directly to me: principal-ib@manchester.global . And if you have any topics of particular interest that you would like to read my thoughts on, then please share away.

Take care and I look forward to meeting you on our campus very soon.


Anthony Wright
Principal - IB

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