India’s smaller cities and towns are emerging as an unlikely engine of growth for schools offering the International Baccalaureate, an elite education program widely viewed as a pathway to universities abroad, according to executives at the Switzerland-based organization.
Long associated with diplomats and affluent families, the IB is expanding well beyond India’s biggest metropolitan centers, Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the organization’s director general and Finland’s former education minister, told Bloomberg News. Nearly half of the schools the IB expects to add in India will be outside the country’s largest cities, said Ashish Trivedi, its head of South Asia and Japan.
