Jakarta · History
Independent School of Jakarta: growing a year group at a time since 2021
Opened in Pondok Indah in September 2021 by The Schools Trust, a UK charity, ISJ has added a year group each year and in 2026 was ranked Jakarta's top British school.
The Independent School of Jakarta opened its doors in September 2021, taking its first pupils from Nursery through Year 4 on a purpose-built campus in Pondok Indah, South Jakarta. The plan from the outset was deliberate: start small, grow one year group at a time, and build up to the full 2-to-18 arc of a British independent school.
Origins and Backing
ISJ was founded by The Schools Trust, a UK-registered charity (registration number 1176052) with more than fifty years of combined experience founding and running British international schools. The Trust has set up more than fifteen schools in places ranging from Beijing to Brazil.
The founding head was Emma Webb, who had previously led Queen's College Prep in London. Webb set the school's tone: recruit teachers exclusively from the UK independent sector, follow the English National Curriculum without compromise, and weave Indonesian language, history, and culture into every stage rather than treating them as add-ons.
Leadership Change
In 2024 Eileen Fisher took over as Academic Director. Edinburgh-born, with 31 years in education, Fisher had spent a decade as Head of the Preparatory School at Ipswich High School and served as Chair of the Prep Heads' Committee for the Girls' Day School Trust, a role that put her in front of prep school heads across the United Kingdom. She had also founded Craigclowan Prep in Xi'an and led the junior school at The British School of Cairo, so she had built British schools abroad before. She is an inspector for both ISI and Penta, the two bodies that inspect ISJ.
Curriculum and Accreditation
ISJ delivers the English National Curriculum from EYFS through to A Levels, structured as Pre-Prep (ages 2 to 6), Prep School (ages 7 to 13), Senior School leading to IGCSEs, and Sixth Form offering Cambridge A Levels. Every teacher holds UK Qualified Teacher Status. The school operates under the British Schools Overseas framework and is inspected periodically by ISI or Penta International inspectors, the same kind of external check applied to British independent schools at home.
Bahasa Indonesia is taught at every stage, and Mandarin, Spanish, and French are also on offer. The school runs a Ki Hajar Dewantara Scholarship, named for Indonesia's founding education minister, offering up to full fee relief for high-achieving Indonesian pupils who could not otherwise afford to attend.
Academically, ISJ's Year 7 cohort recorded mean Standard Age Scores in GL Education assessments of around 122 in English, 118.7 in Mathematics, and 119.7 in Science, placing pupils consistently in the top ten percent of international schools worldwide. The Schools Trust network, of which ISJ is a part, holds first and second place rankings across more than 200 British international schools for A Level and GCSE results.
Campus and Expansion
The current campus sits on Jalan T.B. Simatupang in Pondok Indah, a leafy residential district about twenty minutes from central Jakarta. Facilities include a 25-metre swimming pool, a full-size football pitch, a theatre, creative arts spaces, and specialist science and language laboratories. The co-curricular programme runs more than 30 clubs per term.
A purpose-built Senior Campus is under development 300 metres from the existing site, designed for GCSE and A Level teaching, with science labs, art studios, a theatre, library, and football pitch. It is scheduled to open in 2028.
In January 2026, ISJ began preparing its first senior pupils for British boarding school applications, hosting Kay Extance, Head of Senior School at Ipswich High School in Suffolk, to meet parents and students exploring UK pathways. Year 7 and Year 8 pupils were due to travel to Ipswich High School in April 2026 for a twelve-day immersion, attending lessons, living in boarding houses, and making excursions to London, Oxford, and Cambridge. The link to Ipswich High is close: Fisher ran its prep school, and The Schools Trust owns Woolverstone Hall, the school's 87-acre Suffolk estate, where ISJ pupils travel each year for a taste of British boarding life.
Present Day
ISJ has around 180 pupils, with the roll growing each year as new cohorts move up. In May 2026, the school was ranked the number one British curriculum school in Jakarta and 22nd across Asia in the 2026 British Schools Asia index, an independent ranking compiled from tuition fees and reputation signals across more than 200 schools in the region. Eileen Fisher leads the school from Pondok Indah. The pupils who will make up its first A Level cohort are already in the school, and the senior campus being built for them is due to open in 2028.