Kumar Bahukhandi
One year ago today, Shrewsbury International School India admitted its first pupils to a 150-acre campus outside Bhopal – the first fully residential campus that Shrewsbury School UK, founded by Royal Charter in 1552, has established outside Britain, and the first Shrewsbury campus in South Asia. The school marks the close of its founding year having built, largely from first principles, the academic, sporting, artistic and pastoral life that will shape the pupils who come after this year’s cohort.
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A Campus Built for Life
A year of building
The school’s first cohort followed a programme built around the Cambridge IGCSE and A-Level curriculum, alongside more than twenty sports – among them India’s first on-campus facilities for indoor rowing, fencing and scuba diving and a full pastoral programme delivered across two boarding houses. Solar power and water-harvesting infrastructure were built into the campus from its earliest planning, and a tree-planting programme across the grounds continues into its second year.
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Where Learning Meets Leadership
In June 2026, the school opened the Sidney Centre for the Performing Arts, its purpose-built home for drama and music, marking the occasion with its first Speech Day. Padma Shri-winning film critic and author Bhawana Somaaya joined as Guest of Honour, speaking to pupils on the arts as a discipline of truth-telling and urging them to question their own convictions as rigorously as they would defend them. That same week, the school held its first Callover – the centuries-old Shrewsbury tradition in which every pupil’s name is read aloud before the Headmaster at the close of the academic year – observed for the first time on Indian soil.
A culture, earned
“There is no ‘the way we’ve always done it’ to fall back on in Year One,” says Dominic Tomalin, Founding Headmaster of Shrewsbury International School India. “Every assembly, every house tradition, every small ritual that will one day feel timeless to a child in these classrooms had to be imagined, tested, and earned before it could become part of who we are.” He credits the school’s founding pupils with setting its tone: “They arrived with nothing to go on but belief – courage, commitment, and a trust in something bigger than themselves, before there was any proof it would work.”
The school has drawn deliberately on two traditions in shaping its first year: Shrewsbury’s own, running back four centuries, and India’s Gurukul model of educating the whole person rather than the mind alone. The two are held together under what the school terms its Salopian Virtues – Wisdom, Integrity, Courage, Kindness, Self-Mastery and Spirit, which inform its daily and academic life alike.
Looking ahead
Shrewsbury India has this month welcomed its second cohort of pupils, and admissions remain open for families weighing a residential education of this kind. Of the year now closed, Tomalin writes simply: “If we continue as we began, we are a legacy school in the making.”
About Shrewsbury International School India
Shrewsbury International School India is located on a 150-acre campus in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, and is the first international campus of Shrewsbury School UK (founded 1552) outside the United Kingdom.
For further information, visit www.shrewsburyindia.in.*
