Cities / Chennai / Peace Academy
Peace Academy
A small Islamic-ethos Cambridge school in central Chennai that pairs the IGCSE pathway with a full Quran and Arabic programme, not a conventional secular international school.
In brief
A small Islamic-ethos Cambridge school in central Chennai that pairs the IGCSE pathway with a full Quran and Arabic programme, not a conventional secular international school.
Peace Academy runs the Cambridge pathway from Primary through Lower Secondary to IGCSE for ages 3 to 17, and stops at IGCSE rather than carrying on to A Level. Alongside the academic subjects it teaches an Al Azaan Madrasa strand covering Hifz, Tafseer, Tajweed, Hadith and Islamic history, so families are choosing a faith-centred education as much as a Cambridge one. It is led by principal Sophia Husain and was founded by chairman Syed Zakir Ahmed around 2015, in the Teynampet area of central Chennai.
Public signal is mixed. Parents praise caring teachers and the dual academic and religious focus, while recurring complaints centre on weak school-to-home communication, fees that feel high for the breadth of academic subjects, and questions about its IGCSE registration status. Directory listings quote annual fees near INR 1.4 lakh, though figures vary and the school does not publish a clear fee schedule online.
Reviews
Written parent accounts split sharply along the same fault line. Families who came for the faith-centred side tend to stay glad of it, naming teachers they find warm and attentive and a child who picks up Quran and Arabic alongside the Cambridge work. The unhappy accounts are concrete rather than vague: a sense that once you set aside the Quran and Arabic strands the spread of academic subjects feels thin for the money, textbooks that do not always come home so parents cannot follow what is being taught, and fees that some report climbing year on year. Several parents say they could not get a straight answer on the school's IGCSE registration before enrolling.
Positives
- Caring teachers. The praise that recurs most is for the teaching staff, described by satisfied parents as supportive and attentive, with one long-standing family of four children naming the teachers as the reason they stayed.
- Faith and academics together. Parents who want a Quran and Arabic grounding under the same roof as Cambridge lessons value that pairing, and some single it out as the best Islamic schooling they found locally.
Considerations
- Thin academic spread for the fee. A recurring complaint is that once the Quran and Arabic strands are set aside, the range of mainstream academic subjects feels narrow relative to what is charged, leaving some parents feeling the fee buys less academic breadth than expected.
- Textbooks and visibility. Some parents say textbooks are not consistently sent home, which leaves them unable to follow what their child is being taught day to day and feeds a wider sense of being kept at arm's length.
- Fees that climb. Beyond the headline cost, parents report annual fee increases and describe the rises as steeper for continuing families than the published figure suggests.
- Registration left unclear. Several parents say they could not get a clear answer on the school's IGCSE registration status before enrolling, and a few question whether it is a properly recognised exam centre at all.
Leadership
Ms Sophia Husain
Location
Pasumpon St, Annish Nagar, Q Block, MMDA Colony, Balavinayagar Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600106, India