Admission to IHS High School is through an examination, which takes place about four months before the beginning of the school year. Places are offered strictly on merit. Prospective candidates into JSS 1 are required to purchase and complete an application form before they are qualified to take the exam. The School expects all candidates to be at least 11 years old by the January following their admission into the school. All students are admitted into JSS1 and 2. The School does not accept students wishing to transfer from another school. Students are expected to board at the school. Parents are advised to make sure that all students who hope to enter a boarding school know how to wash their own clothes, sweep and dust their own room, and keep the elementary rules of personal hygiene. Students should normally have stopped bed-wetting, but in exceptional cases where this is still a problem, they should buy mackintosh for their mattress.

A Word About Age

The School does not allow children to enter Class One before their tenth birthday. If they do they will be tempted to enter university before their sixteenth birthday. We feel that the best time to come to secondary school is at the threshold of adolescence, especially when it involves leaving home to enter a boarding school. The school is simply not geared towards caring for the needs of very young children who are still emotionally dependent on the close support of their mothers. Our optimum age at entry would be 11 or near it, and we certainly prefer that. However gifted a child may be, he or she should have completed a full primary school education before coming to IHS School. The structure of the educational system in the country reflects this and if children are rushed through the early stages, part of the purpose of the 6-3-3-4 system will be subverted.

Education at HIS High School aims to encourage leadership qualities in all students and to encourage responsible decision making and independence of thought. We feel that we are not going to get very far with either of these aims, if children leave school when they are barely 16. The best way of developing leaders in a boarding school is through the prefect system, and, indeed, as the school gets larger we need mature prefects for the efficient running for the boarding houses. This means that we need senior students who are young men and women.