Features
International Schools:
Whose Definition is it Anyway? by Ziad Azzam
Remember the good old days?...
I
do not mean the shoulder-padded 80s, just-plainweird 70s, or the liberating 60s. I am referring to 2019, when educators could still meet, from time to time, in a conference hall, and a teacher could, without fear of contracting a frightful disease or (at the very least) inviting the wrath of the social-distance watchers, pat her colleague on the shoulder for his uncanny ability to fool the school inspector, yet again, into awarding him an ‘outstanding’ rating. Those were the days! I caught myself, quite recently, in a moment of reflection (or should I say reminiscence) about an event
10 | International School | Summer 2021
that preceded surgical masks on every face, everywhere you looked. The date was October 2019, and the event was the World Conference organised by the Alliance for International Education (AIE). Over 155 delegates were in attendance from, by my estimate, at least 20 countries. We were hosted by Ecole Internationale de Genève (Ecolint), a school that can legitimately claim the mantle of being the cradle of international education. Founded in 1924 by civil servants from the newly established International Labour Organization (ILO) and League of Nations, Ecolint has the added distinct honour of being the birthplace of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. The school lists three factors that set it apart from others: • Incomparably International – stemming from Ecolint’s diverse student body, representing 140 nationalities and 80 mother tongues; • Educating for a Better World – relating to the school’s raison d’être of “educating for peace and to inculcate strong humanitarian values of inclusiveness, respect and intercultural understanding”; and • Inclusive, Innovative and Academically Rigorous – combining academic rigour with the ethos of child-centric education and a non-selective admissions policy. During the said conference, the inevitable plenary session on trends and future challenges in international education took centre stage (literally) one afternoon. In it, the delegate from ISC Research shared ISCR’s 10-year global projections on numbers of ‘international’ schools, students, teachers, and fee income. And the statistics were staggering:
