The fruits Haileybury Bhaluka intends to bear
Haileybury Bhaluka is the first international boarding school chain in Bangladesh that is set to start with its first batch in August
With the growth of Bangladesh's economic capacity, the first international boarding school, Haileybury Bhaluka, has started its franchise journey in the South Asian country. It aims to produce global citizens.
The newly enrolled students in the institution linked to Haileybury College UK will start their first academic journey this August.
Why Haileybury Bhaluka? "Because we are lifting hearts and empowering minds. One of the most important pillars of success is to enrol great students.
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What is important for us is to make sure that we are bringing Bangladesh's finest minds to our school on a socially diverse basis," Simon O'Grady, Founding Headmaster of Haileybury Bhaluka, recently told The Business Standard at the campus.
The 850-acre campus is located within the Dhamshur Economic Zone, 75km north of Dhaka, in Mymensingh.
"So our scholarship scheme, the most significant investment in the country's students, enables us to create a socially diverse student body that makes us really proud of what we are doing," he said.
"We have been able to recruit great teachers, all of whom are going to get world-class professional training from Harvard University," he said.
Haileybury Bhaluka signed an agreement with Harvard University to provide its teachers with world-class professional training. "No other school in the country or the region can make that honest claim," said Simon O'Grady.
The school will be able to house up to 1,000 students with outstanding state-of-the-art facilities for modern learning and education.
It offers an exceptional British educational experience for boys aged 11–18 beyond a grade-oriented curriculum.
"The campus itself has been described as Asia's finest campus. We have specialist facilities throughout the campus. We have a specialist science lab, computer labs where AI will be equipped, sports facilities and music facilities. It is of course supervised by these facilities by the specialist international teachers," replied Simon O'Grady.
In 2022, at least 49,151 Bangladeshi students went abroad to study in 58 countries, according to the latest Unesco data. However, there is no data on how many of them went to school or college.
A portion of financially capable guardians of Bangladesh are sending their children abroad to pursue their school and college-level education, according to sector insiders.
To tap into this potential, Haileybury Bhaluka operates under the supervision of IconX Services Limited, a sister concern of travel and hospitality company Best Holdings Limited.
"We expect not to be a mass school, so our focus is to set a standard. Primarily, our target is Bangladeshi students, as we think that the economic capacity of the country is rising to adopt such a world-class education," Sandeep Ananthanarayanan, Haileybury Bhaluka Academic Director, said.
Mentioning how every corner of society can tap the opportunity, he said, "We get a lot of applicants, and they go through the Cognitive Ability Test (CAT).
[For an example] A child who has studied in Bangla medium school and has parents who are both teachers, came and took the [CAT] test. His score topped the whole nation, and he got a 100% scholarship. It's not just for one year, but for his whole school life—grades six to 12."
"We want to find out whether a child can get admitted, and beyond admission if he is really brilliant, they get some level of scholarship," he added.
Last year, 61% of Haileybury students across the world received an opportunity to study at Ivy League and Russell Group universities, such as Harvard, MIT, LSE, Oxford and Cambridge, according to the authority.
Leading filmmaker Christopher Nolan, ex-UK prime minister Clement Attlee, Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling, English cricketer Sam Billings, one of the founders of the Commonwealth Lionel Curtis and economist Thomas Robert Malthus are all Haileybury UK alumni.
"The more names you mention about the great Haileyburians, the more names remain unmentioned. Could not possibly finish listing all the names," Professor SMA Faiz, Haileybury Bhaluka's Adviser and also the former Dhaka University Vice Chancellor told TBS.
"When I went to do my PhD at [University of] Aberdeen in the 1990s, I met a very young group of Malaysian students because there were no good schools and colleges in Malaysia at the time. Look at Malaysia today. They are producing world-class education. Instead of sending students, the students from the West come to Malaysia. Because they are getting the same quality education probably with cheaper prices in Malaysia now," he said.
"This was also kept in mind in opening Haileybury - that we would have that kind of education here so that students would come here from other places," he further added.
The yearly total payment each student has to pay is $34,500 per year. However, a considerable amount of merit-based scholarships - under $15 million - is set aside for students, according to the school authority.
