The Twinkling Stars School
A-01, Block A, Sector 105, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201304, India
http://www.thetwinklingstarsschool.com/
The Twinkling Stars School
Perched on a gentle rise just outside the old port city of Mangalore, The Twinkling Stars School began in 1991 as a single-storey house with fourteen children, a blackboard and the conviction that wonder should remain the heart of learning. Thirty-three years later it has become a Pre-school–Grade 12 day-boarding community of 960 students and 120 faculty, still small enough that every teacher knows every child’s name. The approach is deliberately bilingual—English for inquiry and Kannada for cultural roots—backed by a Cambridge IGCSE programme for Class X and an optional ISC Sciences, Commerce or Humanities stream for Classes XI–XII. Pupils also appear for the State Board exam each April because the founders believe the land and people outside the gate should matter as much as the airports that now connect us to the wider world.
A ten-minute walk from the coast, the nine-acre cedar-terraced campus feels larger than it is. Four academic blocks step uphill in the shape of a constellation; roof gardens grow tulsi and spinach between solar panels that supply 60 % of the school’s energy. The Early Childhood Courtyard is kept shoe-free and scented with lemongrass; older children meet in hexagonal library alcoves under bamboo arches and a corbelled ceiling of recycled fishing-net planter trays. The Science Roof is the favourite spot: a telescope dome that opens at night and is fitted with a Meade LX 200 set bought with proceeds from last year’s student-run “Space Cookie” fair.
Co-curricular life keeps pace with academics. Aquila, the astronomy club, maintains its own asteroid-mining simulation server; Jijivisha, the debate society, edits a monthly podcast in four languages (“Argument of Trees” was listed in Spotify India’s top-50 education shows). Every afternoon from 3 pm – 5 pm students board a mini-van to the near-by Kadri Manjunath Temple where they practise Kalaripayattu or Carnatic vocals in the old pillared hall; on Fridays the schedule flips—mothers from the local fisher-folk collective teach the art of coir-rope knotting on campus. The annual “Twinkle Fest” hosts a 24-hour hackathon partnered by ISRO where students prototype low-cost water sensors for fish farms; last year the winning team was invited to NIAS Bangalore for further incubation.
Evening study support is built into fees. Teachers tutor for free between 6 pm and 8 pm, after which the school buses depart. Boarders (a small group of 88, 60 % scholarship learners from nine coastal districts) stay in two cedar villas edged by tamarind trees. Lights-out is 9:30 pm except on new-moon nights when the astronomy club is allowed to stay on the roof until midnight—an unwritten rule the principal calls “the first draft of adulthood”.
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- Published: July 29, 2025
