Rishi Valley School

Rishi Valley School
Campus from the adjoining hill
Location
Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh India
Information
Type	Private boarding school
Established	1926
Founder	Jiddu Krishnamurti
Sister school	Rajghat Besant School Oak Grove School (Ojai, California) The Valley School Sahyadri School [Brockwood Park School, Bramdean
Principal	Siddhartha Menon
Faculty	~50
Grades	4–12
Gender	Co-educational
Age range	8-17
Enrollment	360
Houses	20
Affiliation	ICSE ISC
Website	www.rishivalley.org

Rishi Valley School is an Indian boarding school, founded by the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. The school has a holistic approach to education in the spirit of Krishnamurti's pedagogical vision. Community service and extracurricular activities are part of a student's schooling, as are discussions, assemblies and club meetings. EducationWorld ranks the boarding school as the best residential school in India.

Rishi Valley's setting is spectacular - some 375 acres of an independent valley, surrounded by ancient hills, and tiny villages. It is located close to the town of Madanapalle, Krishnamurti's birthplace, in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Rishi Valley is a three-hour drive from Bangalore and five hours from Chennai.

The school follows the ICSE board for the ninth and tenth grades and the ISC for the eleventh and twelfth grades. The school accepts students from the fourth through the twelfth grades (ages nine–eighteen). Twenty boarding houses accommodate students across campus with 20 students in each house. The school is divided into a junior (fourth through eighth) and a senior (ninth through twelfth) school. The school is known for the way Krishnamurti's teachings inspire its curricula, which includes developing an appreciation for the environment, art and music, and athletics in addition to traditional subjects. The school runs the Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER) program and a rural school (Rural Education Centre) and a health center (Rural Health Centre).

With a large campus spread over 360 acres (1.5 km²) in the Rayalseema area of southern Andhra Pradesh, Rishi Valley was chosen by Krishnamurti for its atmosphere of peace and serenity, centered on a large banyan tree, one of the oldest in India.

Rishi Valley is nestled in an ancient valley under the Rishikonda Hill where, as folklore has it, sages, or in Sanskrit 'rishis', used to meditate. The school derives its name from these legends. The Rishi River, a rain-fed stream, that flowed down a surrounding hill and through the school has long since dried up, but Jiddu Krishnamurti retained the name for his first school. Ancient granite hills with striking formations surround Rishi Valley on all sides.