Mount Litera School International, Mumbai, Maharashtra
Delegates from the Gyeonggi, Daejeon, and Daegu Offices of Education, South Korea, visited Mount Litera School International as part of IB Global Conference Mumbai 2026. The visit included meaningful dialogue, classroom observations, a school tour, and insights into the PYP, MYP, and DP programmes.
Every studio clears out for it. For one week at the end of April the kilns go cold, the screen beds are scrubbed back to bare mesh and the stages are struck, and three floors of the building become a single exhibition of the work our leavers made this year. It is hung by the students who made it, and for most of the nine days they are in the room beside it, ready to tell you how any of it was done.
The show opens on Friday 1 May at six in the evening and runs until Saturday 9 May. It is free, there is nothing to book, and it is open to anyone: families, other schools, people who live on the street and have always wondered what goes on behind the long windows on the corner.
Around ninety leavers are showing, from the sixth form and the Portfolio Year. Each has a wall, a plinth, a screen or a booth, and each chose what goes in it. Some are showing a single piece they have worked on since September. Others are showing thirty small things, because the thirty small things were the point.
There is no curator. The technicians put up the walls and run the power, and after that the hang belongs to the students. They measure, argue, move each other’s work by a few centimetres and move it back. It takes most of a week, and it is one of the few times the whole year group works on the same thing at the same time.
It is also, quietly, the last lesson of the year. A piece that looked finished in the studio can look unfinished on a white wall under proper light, and there is still time to do something about it. Several of this year’s leavers did.
Nobody here hangs your work for you. If it looks wrong on the wall, that is the last thing the school has to teach you.
Adam Holloway, Head of School
| Day | Open | What is on |
|---|---|---|
| Friday 1 May | 6pm – 9pm | Opening evening. Every maker is in the building. |
| Saturday 2 to Tuesday 5 May | 10am – 5pm | The show, with students on every floor. |
| Wednesday 6 May | 10am – 9pm | Late opening, workshops lit. |
| Thursday 7 to Saturday 9 May | 10am – 5pm | The show. It closes at five on the Saturday. |
On Wednesday 6 May the building stays open until nine and the workshops downstairs are lit, with a technician in each. It is the best evening to come if you want to see how the things upstairs were actually put together: the kiln room, the etching press, the grade suite, the booths with the patch cables still in them.
The show is a good first visit for families thinking about the school, because nobody is performing for you. On the Saturdays someone from Admissions is on the front desk from ten until four, and will happily walk you round, answer questions about entry or just point you at the room your child keeps drifting back to.
If you are applying yourself, come and look at what the Portfolio Year produces. It is the clearest answer we can give to the question of what the year is for.
No. Walk in during opening hours. Groups of more than fifteen are asked to email ahead so the students on duty know to expect you.
Yes. There is a lift to all three floors, and the stages and booths have step-free entrances. The live room is loud; ear defenders are at the door.
Some of it. Where a maker has chosen to sell, a price is on the label, and everything goes to the maker except a small amount for next year’s materials fund.
Most of what is on the walls started as something else in September. Come and see what it turned into.
The North India IB Heads Meeting was successfully held on 15 April 2026 at Scottish High International School, Gurugram, bringing together IB leaders from across North India for purposeful dialogue, collaboration, and shared learning.
The meeting commenced with a welcome address by Dr. Cdr. Kartikay Saini, Founder and Chairman, Scottish High International School, highlighting the remarkable combined experience of over 900 years represented by the gathering of 33 IB Heads. This was followed by student performances that set a thoughtful tone for the day. Ms. Vanita Uppal OBE, Director, The British School, New Delhi, expressed gratitude to the host school and highlighted the strength of collective leadership.
Key discussions focused on sessions like Designing for Neurodiversity – Access Arrangements by Dr. Cdr. Kartikay Saini, emphasising inclusive education and balanced decision-making. A meaningful session on Mindfulness – Wellbeing as System Design, led by Mr. Sameer Arora and team from Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram, highlighted how mindfulness can be embedded into school culture and leadership practices. Later, the Heads discussed attendance challenges in their respective schools, sharing strategies to strengthen accountability and participation.
Heads further discussed security concerns and response protocols to bomb threats, emphasising the importance of ensuring safety while maintaining continuity of learning. Capt. Rohit Sen Bajaj led discussions on increasing IB visibility in Tier 2 / 3 cities, encouraging mentorship, collaboration, and capacity building across regions. Updates from IBGC 2026, presented by Dr. Cdr. Kartikay Saini, and provided valuable insights, followed by the presentation of the Annual Calendar 2026–27 for IB Heads in India and South Asia.
The meeting ended with a vote of thanks delivered by Mr. Sameer Arora, expressing appreciation for the contributions of all the IB Heads present and the support of the students and staff at Scottish High International School.
We were honoured by the presence of IB Heads and leaders including Ms. Vanita Uppal OBE, Dr. Cdr. Kartikay Saini, Capt. Rohit Sen Bajaj, Mr. Sameer Arora, Ms. Bakhtawar Saini, Mr. Atul Khanna, Ms. Manika Sharma, Ms. Rima Singh, Ms. Ripple Sethi, Mr. Abhimanyu Das Gupta, Mr. Aaron Jacob, Ms. Sonya Mehta, Ms. Rupa Chakravarty, Ms. Navina Chadha, Mr. Chris Stevens, Mr. Craig Monaghan, Mr. Dirk Leidinger, Ms. Manjot Dhillon, Ms. Manisha Razdan, Ms. Anvita Gupta, Ms. Geeta Verma, Ms. Shalu Babbar, Ms. Deblina Chakraborty, Ms. Anju Soni, Ms. Soma Dam, Ms. Ramanjit Nagi, Mr. Vineet, Mr. Sunil Kumar Sharma, Ms. Poonam Dahiya, Ms. Neha Sharma, and other distinguished IB leaders who contributed to meaningful and impactful discussions.
A day marked by collaboration, shared leadership, and a collective commitment to strengthening the IB community across the region.
The Kiln Prize goes to work in fired clay by anyone under nineteen, and it is judged blind: the panel sees the piece and a hundred words from its maker, and nothing else. No names, no schools, no portfolios. Two of the six pieces on this year’s shortlist came out of our ceramics studio.
They belong to Maya Okafor, in the sixth form, and Theo Lindqvist, in the Portfolio Year. Neither of them made the piece they set out to make, and both of them rebuilt their work more than once before it went to the judges. That, as it turns out, is the part of the process the prize tends to reward.
Entries arrive from art schools, sixth-form colleges, community studios and a surprising number of kitchens. Around four hundred were submitted this year. The panel, three working potters and a curator, narrows them to six over two days in a room with the entries on trestle tables and the labels turned face down.
Because the judging is blind, the shortlist is the first moment anyone outside the studio knows whose work it is. Maya found out in a Wednesday critique, when a technician walked in holding a letter and the room stopped talking.
Neither of them made the piece they set out to make. Maya’s cups were supposed to be a single jug. Theo’s vessel collapsed twice on the wheel. The finished work is better because of both of those things, and the judges could see it.
Nadia Bergström, ceramics technician
Maya’s entry is a set of eleven cups, thrown in porcelain and glazed in a single pale celadon, each a little shorter than the one before. It began in October as a jug. The jug would not hold its handle, and after the third attempt she cut the body into rings to see where the wall was failing, liked the rings more than the jug and started again with cups.
The set took four firings to get right. The first glaze crawled, the second was too green, and the third cracked two of the cups in the kiln, which is why there are eleven rather than twelve. Her hundred words for the judges end with the sentence: the missing cup is part of the set.
Theo’s piece is a single tall vessel, just under a metre, fired in the school’s wood kiln. It collapsed twice on the wheel at full height, so the version that survived was built in three thrown sections and joined when leather hard. The joins are still visible under the ash glaze, and he decided to leave them that way.
The wood kiln is fired four times a year over two-day shifts, and anyone who has work in it takes a turn at stoking through the night. Theo’s vessel went into the spring firing.
The missing cup is part of the set.
Maya Okafor, from her statement for the judges
Whatever happens in June, both pieces will be back on the ground floor for the degree show, and both makers will be in the building to talk about them. The ceramics studio is open to anyone who knows how to use it until ten every night, and the wheels are rarely all free.
The British School, New Delhi, was delighted to host Dr Nicole Bien, Chief Community Partnerships and Development Officer, and Tim Kaner, Director of Marketing and Communications, from the International Baccalaureate on 24 and 25 March 2026. Their visit centred around dialogue with leaders of IB World Schools in North India and our teachers and students, fostering a deep sense of community across the IB family in North India. During her time with school leaders, Dr Nicole Bien shared insights into the strategic direction of the IBO, key curriculum developments, and the increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary learning.
Dr Nicole Bien engaged in thoughtful discussions around multiple subjects — including the emerging challenges in education, the evolving role of artificial intelligence and technology, shifting university recognition landscapes in the region, and more. These conversations provided valuable perspectives on how schools can continue to adapt while staying aligned with the IB’s educational philosophy. In her conversations with the school’s IBDP students, Dr Nicole Bien responded to thoughtful questions and shared the future direction of IB programmes.
The visit was both affirming and forward-looking, reinforcing our shared commitment to IB education, which is rewarding, stimulating and critical in a rapidly evolving global landscape, underpinned by the core principles of inquiry-based learning, international-mindedness and holistic student development.
Ada Reyes joins the digital studio this week for six weeks, working with the sixth form and the Portfolio Year on field recording and composition for installation. She is the third visiting practitioner this year and the first to work in sound.
Her own work is mostly made outdoors, recorded over long walks through places most people drive past, and finished in a room she describes as the size of a cupboard. She says that is the only honest way to describe most studio practice, and she intends to spend six weeks proving it.
People imagine a studio as a big bright room. Most of mine have been cupboards, and the cupboard is not the problem. The problem is going into it with nothing. I want these students to come back from a walk with too much, and then learn what to throw away.
Ada Reyes
Ada trained as a violinist, stopped playing at twenty and spent the next ten years recording rivers, car parks and the insides of empty buildings. Her installations have been shown in a disused swimming pool, a multi-storey car park and, once, a lift. She is interested in what a sound does to a room, and what a room does to a sound.
For the students, the attraction is partly the kit and partly the permission. A recorder and a pair of headphones go further than most people expect, and a piece of work that lives in a stairwell does not need a gallery to exist.
Eleven students signed up for the residency, from first-year sixth formers who have never recorded anything to a Portfolio Year student who has been building a modular synthesiser since September. Their starting points are already wildly different. One is recording the kiln room through a firing, from lighting to opening. Another has spent two walks under the railway bridge at the end of the road, waiting for the gap between trains. A third wants to record the building at night, empty, and play it back in the dining hall at lunch.
Ada’s only instruction so far has been to stop describing the finished piece. It does not exist yet, she tells them, and describing it too early is the fastest way to make sure it never does.
Everything the residency needs is already in the building, and the kit store lends it without a form.
Most of the residency is for the students enrolled on it, but two sessions a week are open to anyone in the school, whatever they study.
| Session | When | Who can come |
|---|---|---|
| Listening walk | Tuesdays, 3pm, from the main entrance | Any year group |
| Open lab | Thursdays, 4pm – 6pm | Anyone, no experience needed |
| Installation tour | Friday of week six, 5pm | The whole school, and parents |
Ines Moreau, who runs the kit store and the radio rota, has set aside a shelf of recorders for the open sessions. As with everything else in the store, you sign nothing: you take it, and you bring it back.
No. Several of the students on the residency have never made a sound piece before. Listening is the skill, and it is taught from the first walk.
Yes. The studios are open to every student until ten, and the open lab finishes at six.
The installations go up in the final week. If you are in the building that Friday, follow the headphones.
Every studio brought its term to the main hall on Friday and stood beside it. Eleven rooms of work in one, from first-year drawings to Portfolio Year pieces, and the whole school walking between them for an afternoon and most of an evening.
The open crit happens at the end of every term. The rule is the same as the weekly critique each studio holds on a Wednesday, only bigger: you stand next to what you made and account for it, in front of everyone who did not make it. Nothing is marked. The hall was still full at seven.
The main hall is a working room for the rest of the term, full of long tables, half-finished sculpture and other people’s coffee. Turning it into a place where eleven studios can show a term’s work takes most of Thursday evening. Tables go against the walls, the sculpture moves to the edges, and each studio chalks out its patch of floor.
There is always an argument about the light. The painting studio wants the north end by the windows; the moving image students want the opposite, and a corner they can black out. This year the print room lent the stages a set of screens, which is exactly the kind of thing the afternoon is for.
The questions at an open crit are rarely the ones a teacher would ask. A first-year asked a Portfolio Year student why her print was so big. A sixth-former asked the Head whether he ever made anything any more. A group of eleven-year-olds spent twenty minutes in front of a single ceramic bowl, and when they finally left, the student who had made it said it was the best feedback she had had all year.
You spend a term with a piece of work and only the people in your studio see it. Then for one afternoon, three hundred people do, and half of them are younger than you and not at all polite about it. It is the most useful day of the term.
A Portfolio Year student, in the evening
Every term someone new to the school asks why the most public moment in the calendar carries no grade. The answer is that a mark ends a conversation, and the point of the afternoon is to start one. Students who show something unfinished are not penalised for it; they are usually the ones who get the most out of the day.
The crit is also how the studios find out about each other. The print room sees what the stages have been doing. The sound students discover that the ceramicists have been recording their kiln. Several collaborations that ended up in last year’s degree show began with a conversation on this floor.
A mark ends a conversation. The point of the afternoon is to start one.
From the school’s own guide to the open crit
The summer term closes with its own open crit in July, the week after the degree show comes down. In December the building stays open for an evening for the town, not just for parents, and a good deal of what hangs in the hall on Friday will still be in progress then.
The student radio station has broadcast from the sound studio every term since 1991, and it has been run entirely by students the whole time. This week Sound System marks thirty-five years on air with a forty-eight hour broadcast, from six on Friday evening to six on Sunday.
Every presenter who has ever had a show was invited back for an hour. Two hundred and eleven said yes, which is more hours than there are, so the rota is being settled the way it always has been: on the whiteboard by the studio door, in marker, with a great deal of crossing out.
It is not a club with a teacher behind it. There is no staff producer and no approved playlist, and the school has never once asked to hear a show before it goes out. What keeps it going is a short set of rules, written in 1991 and taped inside the booth door, which every new presenter reads before their first show.
Ines Moreau, who looks after the sound studio, keeps the equipment working and the whiteboard wiped. Everything else, from the schedule to the jingles to the arguments about the jingles, belongs to the students.
| Show | Normally | This weekend |
|---|---|---|
| Morning Shift | 7:30 – 8:15am, Monday to Friday | Saturday and Sunday, 7:30am, with former presenters |
| The Crit | 8:15 – 9pm, Tuesday and Thursday | Friday, 8pm, live from the main hall |
| Long Player | 3 – 4pm, Saturday and Sunday | Both days as usual, one album each, start to finish |
| Alumni hours | Not normally on air | Every hour on the hour, Friday 6pm to Sunday 6pm |
The only timetable in the school set by seventeen-year-olds.
Sound System, describing itself
In the building, the station plays in the dining hall, the corridors of the digital studio and, famously, the lift. Outside it, the whole forty-eight hours streams from the school site, and former presenters have been told it will be recorded, which some of them regard as a threat.
If you have ever had a show and have not yet been in touch, there is still a waiting list. It is on the whiteboard.
Possibly. The whiteboard is full, but presenters do drop out, and the students running the weekend are keeping a list. Email the school and ask for Sound System.
Yes, and they do every term. Put your name on the board. The newest presenters usually start with a Saturday afternoon.