Month: October 2012

During this semester my professional reading is the book, “Taking the IB Diploma Programme Forward” edited by Mary Hayden and Jeff Thompson and published by John Catt Ltd. last year (2011). The book is a collection of essays about different aspects of the International Baccalaurate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP). The International School of Belgrade is an IB World School and our curriculum for grades 11 and 12 is the IB DP.  I’ll be blogging about many of the pieces in my principal’s blog.

The first article is entitled, “Growth of the international school market in China and its potential implications for the IB” by long-time international educator and consultant, Barry Drake. He spent 17 years in Hong Kong and really knows China. The most interesting part of the article for me was not the expected growth in China, but Drake’s statistical description of the international school market. It got me thinking about how “international” is ISB.

The definition of an international school is disputed. I liked ” (1) students and staff are representative of a number of different cultures and ethnic origins, where the (2) IB and/or a number of different courses are offered and where the (3) ethos is one of internationalism as distinct from nationalism.” With our nationality cap, all three IB programmes, the first two are very clear and ISB definitely is an international school. With the third statement, it is a bit more difficult to define, but with our students focused on different national systems of university entrance, we have to not be focused on any one nationality. I feel our curriculum offerings reflect this with many languages offered, and a mix of IB and AP (and other) classes offered.

Another measure of our “internationalism” is our accreditation with the Council of International Schools (CIS). We were re-accredited in April of 2011 and it is based on a set of standards. CIS grants accreditation to international schools based on three principles:

1. Demonstrates and actively promotes internationalism in its students
2. Applies the CIS Code of Ethics
3. Undertakes an external school improvement process

Dr. Drake looks at the number of international schools worldwide and the growth of schools. He writes that CIS lists 642 international schools. This number is much smaller than the ISC Research website, a group that specializes in maintaining a database of international schools. They list 6,353 schools in 236 countries with over 3 million students and almost 300,000 teachers. The vast majority of these schools are found in Asia with Europe having the second most international schools.

There are various degrees of “internationalism” with schools. Our school is one of the most international, with 2/3 of our students being globally mobile expats, our teaching staff 60% overseas-hired, English language of instruction, and the original international curriculum (IB) offered at the school. I’ve worked in “international” schools with a mostly host-country national population and many local teachers, that by nature, are culturally more inclined towards “nationalism” rather than “internationalism.” Most of the host country nationals however, are the upper class of the country and will study abroad for their university, but many returning to their home country.

Year	# of international schools
1964	50
1995	1000
2000	2584
2010	5676
2011	5788
2020	11,000

It was interesting to read on the ISC website, there are seven international schools in Belgrade. Of the top of my head, I would say they are counting the British International School, Britannica, Chartwell, Prima, and INSB. There is also the Anglo-American, a new one, Brook Hill, as well as Prima International School. Both Crjnanski, and Boskovic offer the IB DP, and they may also be included in the total. That is not including the French, German, and Russian schools in the city.

Drake finishes the article with the staggering growth numbers of international schools in the world and especially in China. The ISC website lists 329 international schools in China and 168 in Hong Kong. China is expected to reach 581 schools by 2020 and Hong Kong to reach 312.

Why so much growth? A rising middle class wants to put their children in international schools to give them a competitive advantage with their careers. Most of the new international schools are different from before, in that they are for-profit and locally owned. Most of the students are host country nationals because the number of globally mobile expats is not growing as fast as international schools. One thing about new schools however that is not different from the older international schools, is they usually hire teachers from the US/Canada/Australia/UK/New Zealand. This seems to be what the parents want and is the reason they will pay high tuition. Finding enough quality, trained, teachers willing to travel will be difficult for all schools and makes recruiting even more important for ISB.

I am happy to be at ISB and our cultural diversity in our students is the key to us being international. It will be important for us to maintain this diversity, even in a tough economic climate of  dropping expatriate families in Belgrade. I also see a lot of these new schools in Asia have huge enrollments. I feel that big schools are not the best environment for most teenagers. ISB is a great size for teenagers because it allows all students to make a significant contribution to the school. Students are asked to participate in a range of extra curricular activities. I’ve been in smaller schools and that is not good either for most teenagers, as they need the social stimulation and academic competition in the classroom.

How Children Succeed is a new book out by Paul Tough. The book discusses the importance of the non-cognitive or people or soft skills in the success of students, especially in university and beyond. Schools spend a lot of time teaching, measuring, and reporting the cognitive side of education, I think because it is easier than measuring things like resilience or perseverance. But, Tough explains that it is these character traits that will be a bigger factor in determining the future success of our students. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Tough on the Amazon.com web site.

Q. How did writing this book affect you as a parent?

A. My wife and I became parents for the first time just as I started reporting this book, and our son Ellington is now three. Those are crucial years in a child’s development, and I spent a lot of them reading papers on the infant brain and studies on attachment and trauma and stress hormones, trying not to get too overwhelmed.

In the end, though, this research had a surprising effect: it made me more relaxed as a parent. When Ellington was born, I was very much caught up in the idea of childhood as a race–the faster a child develops skills, the better he does on tests, the better he’ll do in life. Having done this reporting, I’m less concerned about my son’s reading and counting ability. Don’t get me wrong, I still want him to know that stuff. But I think he’ll get there in time. What I’m more concerned about is his character–or whatever the right synonym is for character when you’re talking about a three-year-old. I want him to be able to get over disappointments, to calm himself down, to keep working at a puzzle even when it’s frustrating, to be good at sharing, to feel loved and confident and full of a sense of belonging. Most important, I want him to be able to deal with failure.

That’s a difficult thing for parents to give their children, since we have deep in our DNA the urge to shield our kids from every kind of trouble. But what we’re finding out now is that in trying to protect our children, we may actually be harming them. By not giving them the chance to learn to manage adversity, to cope with failure, we produce kids who have real problems when they grow up. Overcoming adversity is what produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and lasting success.

I listened to a pod cast from the National Public Radio program, This American Life, interviewing Mr. Tough and some other stories about school programs focusing on these character traits. It got me thinking of what we are doing at ISB in these areas. I know that we do talk with the students all the time about these things, and many of them are covered in the Learner Profile. I also feel that much of this comes from our families and these skills are developed at home. It would be more critical with a school population, for example, in a lower socio-economic demographic.

I think we can do a better job of systematically identifying and teaching the skills however, for success and a portion of our students are lacking in  these. For example in the podcast, they discuss a program in Chicago, Illinois schools that teaches at-risk students skills for success at university instead of focusing on solely on raising SAT scores. Many of these are common sense, but very important. Two things students can do they mentioned was for them to sit in the front row during university lectures, and introduce themselves to the professor and take advantage of office hours of the professors. In the US, we have the highest drop out rate of university students in the world. Only 58% of students graduate within 6 years of enrolling. I think some of this is caused by our focus on preparing students to get into university and not preparing them for coping with university life. I also think that more students go to university than in other countries, and many who drop out, would not have enrolled in other countries. It is something for me to think about, especially when we are working with our high school students. 

I will definitely download the book and perhaps get a group of our faculty together to come up with a system of looking at these skills. Perhaps in adapting our Learner Profile.