From the Head of School

 

What is an International School?

There are currently 45 different nationalities of students at ISA.  But this is not what makes us an international school. There is a school in London which boasts 42 home languages among its students.  It is proud of its diversity, but does not claim to be an international school. 

Nor is it the IB diploma that makes us ‘international’. Both Fettes in Scotland and Wellington in England offer IB, neither make that claim; Harrow school in Beijing teaches the English national curriculum, GCSEs and A Levels, and does.

It seems very confusing, but is ultimately quite simple.  To call ourselves international we have to be accredited as such.  There are four or five agencies worldwide that do this: at ISA, we use two - the Middle States Association (MSA), based in the US, and the Council of International Schools (CIS) based in Europe. (And as a school in Scotland - although not a Scottish school - we are also inspected by the Scottish government).

Unlike national inspectors, who only really look at teaching and learning, accreditation agencies look at every aspect of a school  - from its guiding statements, governors and management through teaching, learning and assessment to staffing, facilities and relationships with parents.  Through all these, accreditors ask if the school is

• delivering on its own stated mission
• providing effective student learning
• ensuring student world-being
• developing global citizenship

We have thought long and hard about these four things.   You can read our guiding statements here and our definition of high quality learning here. Many of our staff committees and much of our training is structured around them. 

Particularly important to us are the culminating words of our mission statement - global citizenship. We developed this statement of internationalism a few years ago to give us a better idea of what we meant by it and undertook the Rights Respecting Schools Award to give us more focus.  

To be an international school is not about student demographics or a particular curriculum; it is in the purpose of the school and the values we demonstrate in everything we do.  It is an aspiration. 

In the last few years, pandemics, climate change and wars in ‘far away places’ have all taught us that we are part of a global community whether we want to be or not.  We owe it to our children to become an effective part of that community.