Ekaaya is a new IB school being built from scratch in Baroda. Before the first student arrives, the founders spent a year defining the finished picture — the kind of person this school is designed to grow. I Act is what that picture looks like in practice.
The Ekaaya founders are not educators by background. They are business people with a conviction — that education could be done better, and that they were in a position to build something worth building.
They came with a long document: vision statements, mission statements, a list of inspiring theories, a list of values. It was earnest and thorough. It was also written in the language shared by many school brochures — "transformative," "holistic," "21st century skills." The instincts were right. The language was borrowed.
And there was no structural answer to the most important question: if a parent, a teacher, or a student asks what makes this school different from every other school in Baroda — what is the specific, honest answer?
"At EIS, we envision a transformative educational experience that empowers students to discover and nurture their unique potential... cultivate self-aware, self-confident, and compassionate individuals equipped with 21st-century skills..."
The temptation in school-building is to move fast toward programmes, timetables, and hiring. We insisted on moving slowly toward clarity first. A school built on unclear identity will make inconsistent decisions at every fork. You need a filter before you need a schedule.
Who is the
graduate we
are growing?
The programme
that grows
that person
Adults who
believe in
that design
Has a clear
filter to
test against
This is the sequence Ekaaya followed. Four workshops. One question at a time.
Finding the DNA
We didn't start with the document they had written. We started with a question: if this school were a brand, what would it stand for in two or three words? We used examples — Volvo means safety, Harvard means intellectual prestige, Disney means magic. What does Ekaaya mean?
Output: Directional themes identified. Agreement to go deeper.
The Seven Pillars
We introduced the Saat Stambh — seven institutional dimensions every school implicitly answers, whether it knows it or not: belief about the child, purpose and promise, learning philosophy, adult culture, relationships and power, engagement with the world, continuity and identity. We worked through each one.
Output: Two candidate cores tested against all seven pillars.
The Founders Return
The founders came back having sat with the framework. They had refined their answers. The language had shifted — less borrowed, more theirs. The three Cs emerged clearly: the school was trying to grow adults who are Competent, Compassionate, and Conscious. Simple. Specific. Testable.
Output: Core belief crystallised. 12 tangible institutional practices defined.
Vision to Programme
With identity clear, we could ask: what is the programme that makes this real for students every day, across twelve years? I Act was designed here — not as an add-on to the board curriculum, but as the dedicated spine for everything a board doesn't cover: self-discovery, character, contribution, and personal narrative.
Output: I Act designed — three phases, competency framework, implementation model.
Every school adopts a board — IB, CBSE, Cambridge, IGCSE. Boards provide academic rigour, curriculum frameworks, and assessment structures. They are a necessary foundation and, when implemented well, a genuinely strong one.
But a board does not answer who your students are. It does not build a child's relationship to their own strengths. It does not give them a language for their values or connect their academic learning to action in the world. These things require deliberate design — separate from, and in addition to, whatever board a school chooses.
Ekaaya chose IB. The question was never whether to implement it well — of course. The question was: what does Ekaaya do that a board, by design, does not?
The board handles
Academic rigour, curriculum structure, subject depth, assessment frameworks, and recognised qualifications.
I Act handles
Self-discovery, character development, contribution to community, personal narrative, who this student is becoming.
Both share
Inquiry, action, and reflection — I Act reinforces rather than competes with the academic programme.
Neither can replace the other
A student can leave school academically strong and personally adrift. I Act is the design against that outcome.
Competent. Compassionate. Conscious. These three words are Ekaaya's answer to the graduate question. I Act is the programme that makes them real — a structured, board-integrated spine that runs from Grade 1 to Grade 12. Dedicated time, dedicated teachers, a progression that builds deliberately year on year.
Discover
Who am I?
Build self-awareness from the inside out. Children learn to name emotions, identify their strengths, take on small acts of service, and begin to understand that they have something to contribute to the world around them.
CulminationGrade 5 Design Thinking project — using real tools to solve a real problem in their school or community.
Explore
What is the world?
Expand outward. Students engage with real issues, work with NGOs, develop systems thinking, and apply their strengths in service contexts. They begin to understand that the world has problems — and that they have the capacity to engage with them.
CulminationGrade 8 personal code of ethics and a digital portfolio documenting three years of action.
Connect
What will I do?
Self-directed. Students identify a passion, design a two-year capstone project, find their own mentors, raise funds if needed, and implement something real. In Grades 11-12, I Act tapers deliberately — the student's work now speaks for itself.
CulminationGrade 12 portfolio showcase and reflective essay — their entire I Act journey told in their own words, used directly for college applications.
I Act doesn't add time to an already full schedule. It replaces what was already there — activity periods, CAS requirements, disconnected SEL sessions — with something coherent and intentional. The same hours, used differently.
A school can believe everything that Ekaaya believes and still fail to communicate it. Values stated in a handbook are invisible. A programme with a name, a structure, and a promise is something you can point to.
I Act does something strategically important beyond its programme design: it makes the abstract concrete. It tells every person who interacts with Ekaaya exactly what this school is trying to do — and gives them a way to hold the school accountable to it.
This matters especially for a new school. You don't have alumni yet. You don't have outcomes yet. What you have is clarity — and clarity, when it's genuine, is the most powerful thing you can offer a parent, a teacher, or a student who is deciding whether to trust you.
To prospective parents
This school has thought carefully about what it means to prepare a child for life — not just for exams. There is a programme, not just a philosophy.
To teachers being hired
This is the kind of school that will ask something real of you — and will support you in delivering it. Your role is Guide, not just subject teacher.
To students
What you do here matters beyond marks. You will be asked who you are, what you care about, and what you're going to do about it. Every year.
To the institution itself
A named programme creates accountability. When decisions are made about time, hiring, or resources, I Act is a stake in the ground — a constant reminder of what was promised.
Ekaaya has not opened yet. I Act has not been tested with real students, real teachers under pressure, or real parents asking difficult questions in October. We are honest about that.
What we do know is that the design was built on rigorous thinking. The seven-pillar framework asked hard questions. The founders sat with the answers before accepting them. The programme architecture — three phases, deliberate progression, integration with IB rather than competition against it — reflects decisions made carefully, not quickly.
Schools that invest this kind of time before they open tend to make better decisions once they are open. That is the bet. The evidence will follow.
Can teachers be hired and trained to hold this culture — not just understand it on paper?
Will I Act survive contact with real students, real timetable pressures, and the weight of IB assessment in Grades 11 and 12?
Will parents in Baroda — many sending their first child to an IB school — trust a programme that measures growth, not grades?
Will the programme evolve well as the school learns what its students actually need — without losing what makes it distinctive?
"A school is more than a board and a building. It has a personality, a set of beliefs, and a specific promise to the community it serves. Defining that — clearly and honestly — is the most important work a new institution can do."
This is the kind of engagement Educai8 does: sitting with founders long enough to find what is genuinely theirs, then designing programmes that make those beliefs real. Not as add-ons to the academic programme. As architecture beneath it.