Jakarta's ISJ Opens Path to A-Levels with New Senior Campus

The Independent School of Jakarta will extend its programme through GCSEs and A-Levels for the first time, the school announced this week, according to EIN Presswire. The move ends a long-standing break in provision that had seen pupils complete their primary and lower-secondary years at ISJ before transferring elsewhere at the end of Year 8.

A purpose-built senior campus will open in Pondok Indah, South Jakarta, in 2028, three hundred metres from the existing junior site. It will house science and technology laboratories, art and music studios, a theatre, a secondary library, and a full-size football pitch. The design includes covered walkways and landscaped courtyards adapted for Jakarta's climate.

Twelve subjects from launch

ISJ plans to launch the A-Level programme with twelve subjects: Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Economics, English Literature, History, Computer Science, Art, a Modern Foreign Language, and Music. The selection covers the principal university entrance routes into medicine, engineering, law, and the sciences. University guidance will begin in Year 11, supporting UCAS applications as well as entries to institutions in the United States, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Europe.

The current Year 7 cohort will be the first to progress through the new senior school. "This development ensures that families can stay with us through to graduation, benefiting from the same values and continuity of care," said Eileen Fisher, Head of ISJ.

Performance and context

ISJ pupils currently score in the top ten per cent globally in standardised assessments, performing seventeen points above average in English and eighteen points above in Mathematics. Teachers are recruited from leading UK independent schools, and the trust that governs ISJ operates sixteen schools across eleven countries, with 65 to 81 per cent of GCSE grades at A*/A in recent sittings, against a 22 per cent UK national average.

For Jakarta's expatriate community the announcement removes a practical friction point. Families who built their plans around ISJ's early years provision often faced an unavoidable choice at Year 8: move schools, move cities, or transfer their children into a different educational system entirely. That choice will no longer be necessary once the senior campus opens.