Podar International School is a group of schools that is a part of the Podar Education Network that was established in 1927 by Sheth Anandilal Podar, with Mahatma Gandhi as the first President of the trust. The group is headquartered in Mumbai. It offers educational streams such as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), Secondary School Certificate (SSC), Cambridge (IGCSE) and International Baccalaureate (IB).
Podar International Schools consist of Pre-Primary schools, Primary and Secondary schools, Junior Colleges, Part-Time courses, and Teacher Training Institutes. The Podar network of schools offers educational streams for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CICSE), Secondary School Certificate (SSC), Cambridge IGCSE, and International Baccalaureate (IB).
As of May 2024, there are 144 Podar International Schools across India with over 250,000 students and 7,600 staff members.
Podar International School is a co-ed school. Its first classes were held in 2005 in the Mumbai Suburb of Santacruz West. The school launched interactive E-books on iPad in 2012. The school offers the International Baccalaureate programs for PYP (Grades 1-5) Cambridge Checkpoint and IGCSE (Grades 6-10) and the IBDP and A-levels (Grades 11, 12).
After adding six new schools in five states in 2021, Podar International now has over 136 campuses across 10 states in India.
The Podar International School focuses on technology for education and started teaching students using tablets around 2011, and shifted to digital learning completely between 2015 and 2016 with e-textbooks, e-workbooks and e-notes.
The school promotes technology-based learning through its BetweenUs portal, with a Learning Management System that shares e-versions of the prescribed textbooks with the students. The system also enables teacher-student interaction.
In November 2020, Podar International School announced an Innovation Lab that aims to enable students to learn about robotics, coding, drones, Virtual Reality, and 3D Printing. This lab will be set up across all Podar International School campuses.
In 2010, the school's Santacruz campus in Mumbai conducted a seminar, along with Ecole Mondiale world School, Juhu, to teach students how to read nutritional labels, how the contents affect one's health, and how to detect food that has gone past its expiry date.
Podar International School, Mumbai, conducted a city-wide survey of the usage of smartphones and its effects on the relationship between parents and children. Over 5,000 parents and 2000 school-going children participated in the survey in December 2013. The results showed that children often felt their parents loved their phones more than them.
The school's Indore campus hosted the CBSE Master Training Workshop on âÂÂHappy Classrooms' in December 2019 where over 50 principals and vice-principals from Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan participated.
The school's Nagpur campus conducted a virtual run, EâÂÂMarathon for its students, parents, grandparents and teachers, in July 2020. The run was conducted to convey a message of keeping oneself fit and healthy amidst the outbreak of COVID-19.àBetween 6 am to 10 am, more than 1,000 participants covered the specified distance, undertaking all safety measures, recording their timings on the suggested fitness app, and uploading the snapshots of their run summary on the given link.
The school's Nagpur campus conducted a virtual run, EâÂÂMarathon for its students, parents, grandparents and teachers, in July 2020. The run was conducted to convey a message of keeping oneself fit and healthy amidst the outbreak of COVID-19. Between 6 am to 10 am, more than 1,000 participants covered the specified distance, undertaking all safety measures, recording their timings on the suggested fitness app, and uploading the snapshots of their run summary on the given link.
In October 2021, 62 out of 139 schools across the country have been partially opened for students.
A 9-student team from the group's RN Podar school campus in Mumbai won at the âÂÂBeamline for Schools' competition, 2018, conducted by CERN, the Geneva-based European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and became, along with International School of Manila, Philippines, the first Asian school teams to win the competition since its inception.
In October 2019, a female student of the Podar International School, Mumbai was one of the âÂÂall-girls' team that represented India in a robotics competition, First Global Challenge 2019, held in Dubai.