About Us
The Citadel International School
Established in 2010 · Bihpur, Bhagalpur, Bihar — a riverside campus where scholarship, craft and character are built together, brick by brick.
A school built on a conviction
Citadel International School opened its gates in April 2010 with eighty-seven students, eleven teachers and one unfinished building. It was founded by the Citadel Education Trust, a group of educators, civil servants and business families of Bhagalpur who shared a simple frustration — that the brightest children of the district had to leave home, sometimes at nine or ten years old, to find the education they deserved.
The founders believed the answer was not to imitate the metro schools, but to build something rooted here: a school that matched any national standard in academics, yet drew its character from the river country around it — from the weavers of the Silk City, from the murals and manuscripts of the region, from the Ganges itself. The name was chosen deliberately. A citadel is a stronghold; the school would be a stronghold of learning for the families of Bihpur and the forty villages beyond it.
Sixteen years on, the school serves more than 1,250 students from Nursery to Class XII, follows a CBSE-pattern curriculum enriched by four creative disciplines, and sends its graduates to leading universities across India. The unfinished building is long complete — but the conviction has not changed.
To give every child of the river country an education of international standard — rigorous in scholarship, rich in craft and unwavering in character.
Four values, four houses
Every student joins one of four houses on arrival — each named for a current that shapes the region — and carries its banner in sport, studio and service.
Scholarship
We read widely, question honestly and hold ourselves to the highest academic standard — in the classroom and beyond it.
Craft
From the loom to the page, we honour work that is made slowly and well. Every student learns to make something with their hands.
Character
Courage, courtesy and conscience are taught as deliberately as mathematics — practised daily, in corridors and on fields.
Community
The Citadel exists for Bihpur and its forty villages. Our students teach, build, perform and serve in the district that raises them.
Message from the Principal
Dr. Meera Sinha
Principal · Citadel International SchoolWhen parents walk through our gates for the first time, they often ask what makes the Citadel different. My answer is always the same — we never chose between academics and the arts, between discipline and imagination, between this district and the wider world. Your child does not have to leave home to become everything they are capable of becoming. They only have to arrive.
A scholar of medieval Indian history and an educator of twenty-eight years, Dr. Sinha has led the Citadel since 2014 and sits on the CBSE curriculum review panel. She still teaches one history class a week — to Class VIII, and refuses to give it up.
Five acres by the river
Purpose-built blocks for scholarship and for craft — every space designed to be used, not merely admired.
The Academic Block & Ganga Library
Thirty-two smart classrooms, three science laboratories and the Ganga Library — nineteen thousand volumes, a silent-reading veranda facing the river, and the largest children's collection in the district. The library stays open until eight each evening, and its steps are the unofficial favourite seat of the school.
- 32 smart classrooms — maximum 30 students per section
- Physics, Chemistry & Biology labs — CBSE senior-secondary standard
- The Ganga Library — 19,000 volumes in Hindi, English & Bangla
The Studio Wing
A purpose-built wing houses the four discipline departments — a fashion atelier with sixteen looms, an interiors studio with its materials library, a north-lit painting hall, and the Writing Room with its living wall of student anthologies. Outside: an amphitheatre, athletics field, basketball courts and a swimming pool completed in 2021.
- Fashion atelier — looms, draping stands & a dye garden
- North-lit painting hall & ceramics kiln
- Amphitheatre & sports field — house events every term
The gates are open
Come and walk the campus with us — meet the principal, sit in on a studio, and have your questions answered over tea at the visitor's pavilion.