UK INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS


Marymount International School


and is taught in more than 2,600 schools worldwide. Michael O’Sullivan, chief executive of the CIE, believes that the IGCSE helps students to gain a global perspective on their learning. “The desire to learn by looking beyond our own society is more evident than ever,” he says, “with more than a million pupils taking Cambridge examinations around the world. These students want to maximise their potential by having an education with international characteristics. This allows them to gain globally recognised qualifications, and to look beyond their own country in their education. “For pupils and their parents, education is the key to achieving personal goals, such as improved employment and higher-education prospects. Increasingly, those goals have a global perspective, and pupils want access to the world’s leading universities wherever they are. They see an international education as a means to achieve this.”


BENEFITING THE UK ECONOMY


Access to international higher education is becoming increasingly important for families across the globe, and many are looking to an education based on the UK curriculum to help their children acquire the qualifications necessary to gain entry into the top higher-education institutions. Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and former Minister of State for Universities, Science and Cities, believes that education is an important enabler of UK economic growth and one of the country’s most successful exports.


“Education is global,” said Mr Clark. “In recognition of this, the government published its International Education Strategy, setting out the case and strategy for a step change in the way government supports the education sector to grow internationally.”


Alongside the publication of the International Education


Strategy, the government department UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) established an education unit to support UK education and training organisations to win business


overseas, with the aim of helping the sector to secure £3 billion of new business by 2020 as part of its 2020 Export Drive.


ENSURING QUALITY The UK government operates a system of inspections


for British schools overseas (BSOs), run by a number of approved providers. The scheme looks in detail at similar aspects of education and welfare to the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) in England. These include the quality of the curriculum and teaching, the welfare of pupils, health and safety, and the suitability of school premises.


By achieving UK-inspection-based approval, schools should be able to demonstrate that they provide a British education that has similar characteristics to an education in an independent school in the UK.


Inspectorates are required to publish on their website the results of all inspections for the past three years, but all reports can also be found on the UK government website, gov.uk COBIS offers an alternative external validation system


for BSOs called the Patron’s Accreditation and Compliance, which launched in April 2017. The new process, which is designed and run by COBIS, is rooted in self-evaluation, with professional validation from trained peer-school improvement partners and peer accreditors. “The new COBIS Patron’s Accreditation system encompasses British values with sensitivity to local cultural context and has


a strong emphasis on scrutinising the


effectiveness of safeguarding practices,” says COBIS’s CEO, Colin Bell. With more people working overseas than ever before, the demand for high-quality British international schools has never been greater. And, with the backing of the UK government and the commitment from world-class UK independent schools to continue expanding into popular relocation destinations, globally mobile families are in a strong position to take advantage of a British international education, wherever in the world they choose to call home.


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