What is the Council of International Schools (CIS)?

CIS is a not-for-profit that provides accreditation for international schools. Based in the Netherlands, it has more than 1,600 member schools and universities in about 120 countries.

A CIS accredited school has been evaluated against CIS standards by a team of educators from other schools. Schools go through the process again every five years.

Accreditation is peer review. The evaluators are teachers and leaders from other member schools, and the schools CIS accredits are its paying members.

It checks how a school works: how it is led, how it teaches, how it keeps children safe and how it plans to improve. The outcome is a pass, without a grade. CIS doesn't rank schools, so accreditation can't tell you how two accredited schools compare.

Even so, where government oversight of international schools is patchy or light, as it is in many countries, it is often the most thorough outside check a school gets.

Membership and accreditation

A member school has joined CIS and pays an annual fee for its training, events and contacts. An accredited school has also been evaluated and met CIS's standards.

What does CIS do?

Accreditation is the core of their work with schools. It accredits schools whatever they teach, including IB, British, American and national curricula. Its standards cover three areas:

• the school's purpose and leadership,
• teaching and learning, and
• pupils' wellbeing.

Universities can join too, and around 645 have. Joining to recruit students, they gain access to CIS's directory of member schools, whose pupils are of course future university students. CIS also runs events, including an annual forum on international admissions, where they meet the counsellors who advise students on where to apply.

Since 2014, CIS has also led the International Taskforce on Child Protection. The taskforce was set up after a teacher who had worked in international schools for four decades was exposed as having abused pupils. Child protection is part of the standards every accredited school is checked against, from how staff are vetted to how concerns are reported and handled.

CIS took its current form in 2003, when it separated from the European Council of International Schools, founded in 1965.

How does a school get accredited?

A school has to be a CIS member before it can apply. The process then runs in four stages.

Preparatory visit. Evaluators from CIS spend about three days at the school. They check that the basics are in place (a clear purpose, working policies and practices, and a plan) and agree with the school on future improvement plans.

Self-study. The school picks two to four areas to develop, drawn from its own priorities and CIS's standards, and works on them. At the end it sends CIS evidence of what has changed.

Team visit. A small team of trained volunteers, teachers and leaders from other international schools, spends about four days at the school. They walk through lessons, talk with staff and check the evidence.

Decision. CIS then decides whether to accredit the school. Five years later, the school goes through the process again.

Every school has to meet the same basics, but the improvement work is the school's own choice. This is how CIS can accredit schools teaching very different curricula.

Many schools combine CIS with WASC or the IB's own reviews, so staff go through one joint process rather than two or three.

Who recognises CIS accreditation?

Some governments build it into their own rules. Indonesia's national school accreditation agency recognises it, and Japan accepts students from CIS-accredited schools for entry to its universities.

The main associations of British international schools, COBIS, BSME and FOBISIA, accept it as a mark of quality too.

CIS-accredited schools by city