Institutional Learning at ISF: Excellence through Accreditation

Apr 12, 2024

Last month, we submitted the first section of the CIS/WASC ‘self-study’ report, which forms a key part of the CIS/WASC re-accreditation exercise currently in progress. This section of the report, which contains key strategic information about our school, is submitted eight months ahead of the formal Team Evaluation, scheduled to take place in early November; its purpose is to seek ‘early feedback’ about our self-evaluation from an experienced school accreditation expert who visited ISF in the first half of 2023.

The report contained detailed information about our school’s guiding statements – the ISF vision, mission, core values – along with details of our history, facilities, enrolment, curricular and co-curricular programs, student and staff demographics, academic results, strategic planning, and our finances. It also contained an initial analysis of the results gathered from the CIS Community Survey conducted in recent months. The final section of the report was a first draft of our responses to the Domain A standards. The CIS International Accreditation protocol requires ISF to meet 45 standards across eight domains to retain its ‘accredited’ status (first achieved in 2014). This first accreditation domain (Domain A) focuses on our ‘Purpose and Direction’. The key expectations embedded in Domain A are that ISF has a set of clear and aspirational guiding statements that are appropriate for our community and that these statements inform high quality learning that is ethical, global, child-centered, wellbeing-focused, inclusive, and subject to ongoing scrutiny, monitoring, and improvement.

We received our early feedback report just before the Easter holiday break. The report commended our efforts to date, acknowledged our healthy institutional metrics, and confirmed our positive trajectory towards the Team Evaluation in November. At the same time, the feedback report also reminded us to take note of the recommendations and suggestions raised in previous accreditation events to ensure we continue to strive towards continuous institutional improvement. The importance of continuity between our past efforts and future endeavors is very clear.

There is a compelling symmetry between the accreditation process and the educational programs in which ISF learners engage every day of the academic year. We strive to learn, plan, prepare, and execute demonstrations of skill and knowledge against performance standards and receive commendations and corrective feedback from our CIS/WASC peers and mentors. We seek to incorporate feedback into future planning to ensure that we learn from our shared, accumulated experience. In so doing, we acknowledge that there is always room for improvement. We also demonstrate our commitment to the notion that learning that remains unexamined is inert at best. Substantive excellence is proven in testing, not in idle claims. Just like our ISF students, we embrace the idea that examinations allow us to excel and achieve, but also offer an opportunity to learn and set our sights even higher.

Another examination-related milestone is rapidly approaching. This week, we say farewell to members of the Class of 2024. After a journey of 15 years through kindergarten, primary school, and secondary school, the 83 members of our graduating class have reached the end of their formal class timetable; they now face the final evaluation of their school learning in the form of the IB Diploma Examinations to be held in May. We know that tensions are rising among our Grade 12s; at the same time, we know that they are well prepared to excel in this final test of academic skill.

For our graduating class, rather than re-accreditation, the reward of places in highly selective tertiary institutions around the world awaits. To date, members of the Class of 2024 have received 489 offers, an average of nearly six offers per graduate. Offering institutions include some of the world’s most prestigious and famous universities, including Cambridge, UCL, Kings, LSE, and Imperial College in the UK; and Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Chicago, Duke, NYU, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Williams, Wellesley, Northwestern, Middlebury, and Boston University in the US. Closer to home, members of the Class of 2024 have received 43 offers from the University of Hong Kong alone. Scholarships totaling HK$14 million are on offer. Course aspirations include medicine, law, business, classics, sciences, and the arts. We also have an aspiring commercial pilot among our graduates! These outcomes also provide compelling evidence of fulfilment of our own academic aspirations.

As we face our forthcoming examinations, both institutional and individual, we should take a moment to encourage each other (particularly our Grade 12 students!). We should also reflect on the importance of testing our dreams and aspirations to truly achieve excellence in all our endeavors.

Dr. Malcolm Pritchard

Head of School