Ranking · Accreditations

What each accreditation means

A school card here carries a line such as "school is in the CIS and Cambridge registries". It is useful exactly to the extent that you know what those letters stand for. This page takes each organisation that appears in our data and sets out what it actually checks, whether anyone comes to the school, how often the status is confirmed again, where you can check a school yourself, and what its badge does not mean.

The last of those matters most to us. An accreditation is not a verdict of "a good school", and almost none of the organisations listed here looks at exam results. A guide that keeps quiet about this works as advertising for accreditations rather than as help to a parent.

Three different things called by one word

They accredit the whole school. CIS, MSA, ACS WASC, NEASC, Cognia, ACSI, COBIS, BSO, ZfA, educationsuisse, AEFE, NCEQE, EDT

They authorise a programme. IB, Cambridge, College Board, Pearson, Nova Scotia programme, British Columbia programme, UK ENIC, Russian state accreditation, MEB, MGIMO Russian schools

Networks, associations and operators. ICA, FOBISIA, CEESA, Round Square, UWC, PASCH, WDA, Maarif, SABIS, NCUK, Ardingly College, ECIS, HMC, IAPS, TISAC, ISAT, EARCOS, ONESQA, ESSARP, ABSCh

The colour of the marker on a school card speaks to what can be checked, not to the quality of the school: green means the entry was found in a public registry, amber means it is confirmed by a document from the school, by membership or by taking part in a network, red means the school claims it and nothing confirms it. So far 1263 schools out of 1296 have been found in registries. How this enters the score →

They accredit the whole school

These organisations judge the institution: governance, finances, safeguarding, recruitment, premises, the quality of teaching. A team of inspectors comes to the school, and the school spends a year or eighteen months on a self-study first. This is the weightiest kind of confirmation there is, and it is the one that earns a green marker.

CIS

Council of International Schools · Netherlands, Leiden

What it does to the school: A paying membership association and an accrediting body at the same time, and the two have to be kept apart. Membership comes first and is compulsory: accreditation is offered to members only. A school can belong to CIS for years and never go through accreditation. The accreditation itself judges the institution against standards covering governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, twice. A preparatory visit of about three days, then the school's self-study, then an evaluation visit by a team of about four days. The evaluators are volunteers from other CIS accredited schools.
How often it is confirmed again: Here we have to say something awkward: the CIS sources disagree with each other. The current questions-and-answers section speaks of a ten-year cycle, while the 2019 document on the accreditation framework speaks of five years. Most likely the cycle is ten years with an interim review at five, but we will not state that as a fact.
Where to check a school yourself: CIS membership directory → The directory mixes members and accredited schools together. Finding a school in it is not enough: you have to make sure the entry says accreditation.
What it does not mean: It does not look at exam results. The model is developmental: the school itself picks two to four areas to grow in, so two accredited schools may have been judged against quite different priorities. And the main thing: "a CIS member" and "accredited by CIS" are different things, and they are exactly what marketing confuses most often.
In our ranking: 230 schools in 16 countries: European School, Australian International School Saigon, Concordian International School, Hanoi International School, Tashkent International School (TIS), International Schools of North America - Saigon South Campus (SNA), NIS Astana (IB-кампус сети НИШ), Saigon South International School and 222 more.

MSA

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools · United States, Philadelphia · founded in 1887

What it does to the school: An American accreditation of the institution, from pre-school age to the final year. The standards cover twelve areas, including finances, premises, governance, the curriculum and student support. It works in more than a hundred countries and is linked to the Office of Overseas Schools of the US State Department.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a visiting team for about three and a half days after the self-study. The chair's report takes six to eight weeks to write.
How often it is confirmed again: Five years, with a report and a second visit in the fourth year, or seven years with an interim report early in the third. On the seven-year term a second visit is scheduled only if the report raised questions: an accreditation can stand for seven years without one.
Where to check a school yourself: MSA school directory → The directory prints not one status but a compound one, and it has to be read part by part. "Cooperative - Active - Accredited" means a live accreditation. "Cooperative - Active" without the third word means live membership of the association, and that is not accreditation. "Cooperative - Candidate" means a school in the process, with no decision yet. So a school listed as Cooperative - Active does not clear our threshold unless it has some other grounds.
What it does not mean: Branch campuses are not accredited separately: a campus counts as a continuation of the main institution, and the school simply pays extra for it. Which means a group can display the accreditation of a campus whose inspection took place in another city. Exam results are not a threshold. And separately about status: the word Cooperative in the MSA directory means membership, not accreditation.
In our ranking: 34 schools in 15 countries: Anglican International School Jerusalem, Almaty International School (QSI), Walworth Barbour American International School in Israel, QSI International School of Montenegro, Baku International School (QSI), Pan American Christian Academy, Kazakhstan International School (KIS), QSI International School of Tbilisi and 26 more.

ACS WASC

Accrediting Commission for Schools, Western Association of Schools and Colleges · United States, California · founded in 1962

What it does to the school: An American regional accreditation of the institution. Formally it serves California, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Fiji, but in practice it works across Asia and the Pacific and accredits some 5,500 institutions. It judges the whole school: a self-study against the standards, then a visit by a team of peers from other schools.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a visiting team after the school's self-study.
How often it is confirmed again: The full term is usually six years with a mid-term report. Shorter terms are given to schools that have been set conditions, so the length of the term says more about the outcome of the inspection than the fact of accreditation does.
Where to check a school yourself: ACS WASC school directory →
What it does not mean: ACS WASC accredits more than full-day schools. Supplementary and virtual programmes, adult schools and vocational institutions sit in the same directory with the same status, and the fact of accreditation does not tell them apart. If you see "accredited by ACS WASC", check that it is a school and not a programme. Accreditation is not a judgement on the quality of teaching.
In our ranking: 81 schools in 5 countries: Singapore International School @ Gamuda Gardens, International Schools of North America - Saigon South Campus (SNA), Singapore International School @ Danang, Singapore International School @ Vung Tau, Haileybury Almaty, Saigon South International School, TH School Hanoi, EMASI Van Phuc School and 73 more.

NEASC

New England Association of Schools and Colleges · United States, Lowell, Massachusetts · founded in 1885

What it does to the school: An accreditation of the institution. For international schools it uses the ACE approach, where the visitors look first at live lessons rather than at folders of paperwork. The school spends a year or eighteen months on internal reflection across four areas, and then a team arrives. NEASC no longer accredits universities: that work split off into NECHE in 2018.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a visiting team appointed by NEASC works in the school for about a week. About five years pass between the application and the decision.
How often it is confirmed again: Five years, plus a compulsory annual report due on 15 December.
Where to check a school yourself: NEASC school directory → The only directory on this page with an honest status column: Accredited and Candidate are shown separately. Candidate is not accreditation yet.
What it does not mean: NEASC says plainly that it accredits schools, not diplomas: this is no guarantee of the worth of a particular certificate. Accreditation can be lost, and a school can be put on warning. And "accredited by NEASC" does not say which commission did the work: independent schools and international schools are held to different standards.
In our ranking: 39 schools in 12 countries: European Azerbaijan School (EAS), Australian International School Saigon, Concordian International School, Tashkent International School (TIS), Prem Tinsulanonda International School, Bishkek International School (BIS), International School of Belgrade, Spectrum International School and 31 more.

Cognia

Cognia, Inc. · United States, Alpharetta, Georgia · founded in 2006 as AdvancED, renamed in 2019

What it does to the school: Accreditation of schools and of whole school systems: some forty thousand institutions in over a hundred countries. There is a trap here worth knowing about: Cognia membership is a separate paid product with no external inspection behind it at all, 1,100 to 3,000 dollars a year, and it is compulsory as a condition of accreditation. A school can pay for membership for years and not be accredited.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a visit at first accreditation and again at renewal.
How often it is confirmed again: Two years at first accreditation, six years after that. The badge on a school's website may rest on an inspection six years old.
Where to check a school yourself: Cognia registry → The page works only with JavaScript enabled, and we could not read it without a browser.
What it does not mean: System accreditation is granted to the organisation as a whole. An individual campus may carry the Cognia badge even though the inspection was not focused on it. Cognia describes its own approach as continuous improvement, "designed for progress, not pressure": this is certification of a process, not of a result.
In our ranking: 55 schools in 7 countries: European School, Pan American Christian Academy, St. Paul American School Hanoi, Brazilian International School, The Canadian International School, Newton Grammar School, Tbilisi International School, Georgian-American School Progress - Kutaisi and 47 more.

ACSI

Association of Christian Schools International · United States

What it does to the school: A denominational accreditation of Christian schools against the REACH standards: a self-study plus a review by peers from other Christian schools. It often runs jointly with MSA, Cognia or WASC, and a joint accreditation is a markedly stronger signal than ACSI alone.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a visiting team of teachers and administrators from Christian schools, two and a half to four days. The self-study takes 18 to 24 months.
How often it is confirmed again: Up to five years. There is also Foundational Accreditation, an entry level of three years with a one-day visit by a single representative; schools sometimes list it simply as "ACSI accreditation".
Where to check a school yourself: ACSI list of accredited international schools → It is split into sections: ACSI alone, jointly with MSA, jointly with Cognia or WASC. The section matters more than the fact of being listed. The catalogue has moved twice, and the country filter is the search_country parameter with a two-letter code.
What it does not mean: Faithfulness to the Christian confession is part of the standards: this is an accreditation with a condition of belief, and a parent is entitled to know that. It is not a state licence and it grants no right to operate in a country.
In our ranking: 16 schools in 5 countries: Pan American Christian Academy, Faith Christian School, Rio International School, Bangkok Christian International School, International Community School, Bangkok, International Christian School of Nonthaburi, Grace International School, International Community School Udon Thani and 8 more.

COBIS

Council of British International Schools · United Kingdom, London

What it does to the school: The most tangled case on this page. COBIS is an association of British international schools with nine membership categories, and the word "accredited" appears in seven of them. But COBIS carries out its own inspection in one category only, COBIS Accredited Member (COBIS): a team made up of a lead development partner and three peer reviewers works through all ten standards. In the other six categories, the ones with a name in brackets - BSO, CIS, ISI, WASC, NEASC, OEAS - COBIS recognises someone else's accreditation, and the inspection was done by that someone else.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, in both of its own categories. Preparation with an assigned partner takes four to six months. There is also a separate COBIS Member (Compliance) category: an inspection against standards one to five, three days, and the quality of teaching is not part of it at all.
How often it is confirmed again: Five years, both for Compliance and for Accredited Member.
Where to check a school yourself: COBIS school search → We could not establish without a browser whether the search shows the membership category. Without the category the entry is close to useless.
What it does not mean: "A COBIS school" on a school's own website may mean Provisional - a school that has not opened yet. Or Compliance, where teaching was not judged at all. And in "COBIS Accredited Member" the important part is what stands in the brackets: most often the work was done by another organisation, and its report may have been up to five years old when the school applied.
In our ranking: 34 schools in 12 countries: Reigate Grammar School Vietnam, European Azerbaijan School (EAS), Haileybury Almaty, Anglican International School Jerusalem, UG School, British International School of Tbilisi (BIST), Haileybury Astana, The ABC International School and 26 more.

BSO

British Schools Overseas, the inspection scheme of the UK Department for Education · United Kingdom

What it does to the school: A voluntary government scheme: a school abroad is inspected against standards comparable to those for independent schools in England, including the standards for boarding. It does not authorise a programme and does not licence exams - it judges the school.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a full inspection by an independent inspectorate approved by the department. Ofsted does not inspect the schools itself, but it does monitor the inspectorates and publishes an annual report on their work. Since 1 September 2026 there are two approved inspectorates: Education Development Trust and ISI. A third, Penta International, was removed by the department in July 2026 after Ofsted found problems with safeguarding and "overly generous" judgements in its work. Penta reports deserve more caution.
How often it is confirmed again: At least once every three years, otherwise the accreditation lapses.
Where to check a school yourself: BSO schools and their inspection reports on gov.uk → The best registry on this page: a table of schools by country, the date of the inspection and the full report in PDF next to it.
What it does not mean: The scheme is voluntary and paid for by the school, so absence from the list means nothing bad. An asterisk next to a school means it met only those standards it is allowed to meet under the laws of its own country.
In our ranking: 20 schools in 10 countries: Haileybury Almaty, Anglican International School Jerusalem, The Junior & Senior School, The ABC International School, Harrow International School Bangkok, British International School Ho Chi Minh City, The English School, Regents International School Pattaya and 12 more.

ZfA

Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen · Germany

What it does to the school: The German federal agency responsible for German schools abroad. It recognises a school as a German school abroad, funds it and grants the right to award German certificates - the Abitur and the Deutsches Internationales Abitur. Quality is examined through the Bund-Länder-Inspektion; a school that passes receives the mark of an "Exzellente Deutsche Auslandsschule".
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, an inspection at federal and state level. Not peers from neighbouring schools but state inspectors.
How often it is confirmed again: About once every six years. The current version of the inspection is stricter than the old one: a school has to meet the requirements in four areas out of five rather than three.
Where to check a school yourself: Map of German schools abroad → The map shows some 135 German schools abroad, but not the outcome of any inspection.
What it does not mean: The word "German" in a school's name means nothing by itself. A DSD school is a local school that teaches in the language of its country and prepares pupils for the German language diploma; it goes through no inspection and awards no Abitur. There are about 135 German schools abroad, and more than a thousand schools that teach some German programme.
In our ranking: 37 schools in 10 countries: Escola Alemã Corcovado (Deutsche Schule Rio de Janeiro), Colegio Alemán de Temuco, Instituto Ballester (Deutsche Schule Villa Ballester), Asociación Cultural Pestalozzi, Instituto Alemán Carlos Anwandter, Colegio Alemán de La Serena, Ernst-Reuter-Schule Ankara, Deutsche Internationale Schule Tbilissi and 29 more.

educationsuisse

educationsuisse - the association of Swiss schools abroad · Switzerland

What it does to the school: A Swiss school abroad recognised by the Confederation. Recognition grants the right to teach the Swiss curriculum and to take pupils to the Swiss Matura, most often bilingual, alongside the certificate of the host country. Each school has a patron canton answerable for the content of the programme and for the training of its teachers: for the school in Santiago it is Basel-Landschaft. The educationsuisse association keeps the list of schools and recruits Swiss teachers for them.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Recognition is granted by the state, and federal law on the education of Swiss citizens abroad stands behind it. We could find no public description of an inspection with a named composition of inspectors.
How often it is confirmed again: Not described publicly. That is the difference from the German ZfA, which names its cycle outright, and it is worth remembering when the two are set side by side.
Where to check a school yourself: Schools recognised by the Confederation → The list is tiny: sixteen schools in ten countries in the whole world. It shows each school's leaving certificates, its number of pupils and its patron canton, but not the outcome of any inspection.
What it does not mean: The word "Swiss" in a school's name means nothing by itself, and Latin America shows that most clearly: the commercial SIS Swiss International School chain operates there and does not appear on the Confederation's list at all. Sixteen schools are recognised; more than sixteen call themselves Swiss.
In our ranking: 3 schools in 3 countries: Escola Suíço-Brasileira de São Paulo, RIS Swiss Section, Deutschsprachige Schule Bangkok, Colegio Suizo de Santiago.

AEFE

Agence pour l'enseignement français à l'étranger · France

What it does to the school: Precision matters here: accreditation, the homologation, is granted by the French education ministry, while AEFE runs the network and organises the inspections. Homologation confirms that the teaching follows the French national curriculum, and it gives a leaver the right to move into a school in France without an entrance examination. In autumn 2025 the network held 612 schools in 138 countries.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, the inspections are carried out by inspectors of the French education ministry seconded to AEFE.
How often it is confirmed again: Five years.
Where to check a school yourself: Map of AEFE schools → There is a filter by status: gestion directe, conventionné, partenaire. The legally exhaustive source is the annual order in the Journal officiel.
What it does not mean: Homologation is granted stage by stage. A school can be homologated in the primary years and not in the senior ones, so "an AEFE school" sometimes refers to only part of the school. The three statuses - gestion directe, conventionné, partenaire - are all homologated; the difference is whether AEFE sends its own teachers. And a school that simply teaches in French appears in no AEFE registry at all.
In our ranking: 41 schools in 16 countries: Berda Claude International School, Windfield International School, Collège-lycée franco-israélien Marcel-et-Lucette-Drahi, École Française du Caucase, École française européenne de Podgorica, Lycée français international Marguerite Duras, Lycée Molière, Lycée français Anatole France and 33 more.

NCEQE

National Centre for Educational Quality Enhancement, Georgia · Georgia

What it does to the school: State authorisation: permission to operate as a school. It judges the mission, the curriculum, administrative and infrastructure support, and student support. The nearest equivalent on this page is a ministry licence.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, an expert visit of usually two days, two quality experts plus subject experts, one for each stage of schooling.
How often it is confirmed again: Nine years.
Where to check a school yourself: Lists of authorised schools in Georgia → Not a search but two xlsx files to download, in Georgian.
What it does not mean: This is a threshold, not a distinction: every lawfully operating school in Georgia holds authorisation, so by itself it sets no school apart from any other. A nine-year term means the inspection may be a very old one. About the quality of an international programme, if the school runs one, authorisation says nothing.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

EDT

Education Development Trust, formerly the Centre for British Teachers · United Kingdom, Reading · founded in 1968

What it does to the school: An inspectorate, not a membership body: EDT has no school membership at all and no membership categories. It does two jobs, and telling them apart is essential. The first is inspection under the BSO scheme on behalf of the UK department: as of 1 September 2026 EDT is one of the two approved inspectorates, its reports are published as a matter of course, there are 137 of them from 2015 to 2026, a school often has several inspections from different years, and the work of the inspectorates themselves is monitored by Ofsted. That is the most checkable case on this whole page, and it lives under BSO above. The second job is ISQM, EDT's own scheme: the visit is real, two inspectors or more, at least three days, after a year or two of self-study, the term is five years and the levels are Bronze, Silver and Gold. The organisation is a charity with nine offices.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, in both of its jobs. For ISQM: at least two inspectors, at least three days, after a year or two of the school's own self-study. For BSO: a full inspection against the government standards.
How often it is confirmed again: ISQM - five years. BSO - at least once every three years, otherwise the accreditation lapses.
Where to check a school yourself: We found no public registry that a parent could use to check a school.
What it does not mean: The difference between EDT's two jobs matters more to a parent than anything else here. A BSO report is published and can be read in full. An ISQM report goes to the school alone, and no public list of ISQM schools exists at all: no address in the site map is a registry, the programme page links to no list, and a search across twelve countries found nothing. The scheme is alive and has not been renamed - EDT was still selling ISQM in June 2026 - but there is nothing to check a school's claim against. So an ISQM entry can only be a level B one for us: level A means the school was found in a public registry and anyone can check it, and here nobody can. A school clears our threshold through BSO, not through this entry. And a note on independence: EDT owns and runs one school, St Andrew's School in Rochester, but it does not inspect its own school - that one is in England and is inspected by ISI, while ISQM and BSO are addressed to schools abroad.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

They authorise a programme

These organisations speak about a programme, not about a school: the school has the right to teach their course and to award their certificate. Such a status says nothing at all about the quality of the school itself, and that is not our quibble but the organisations' own wording. We count these entries, because a place in a registry can be checked, but we do not mistake them for accreditation.

IB

International Baccalaureate Organization · Switzerland, Geneva · founded in 1968

What it does to the school: It authorises a school to run one or more of its programmes: the PYP from 3 to 12, the MYP from 12 to 16, the DP from 16 to 19 and the career-related CP. A school with at least one of them is called an IB World School. The IB does not judge the institution as a whole: it reaches no verdict on governance, finances or the school's non-IB classes.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes. A consultation visit of two days, then at least a year of trial teaching, then a verification visit by two IB specialists for two days. The whole route takes two to three years.
How often it is confirmed again: Programme evaluation at least once every five years, with a self-study by the school.
Where to check a school yourself: Find an IB school → It shows which programmes a school actually holds. That matters more than the fact of being listed.
What it does not mean: Authorisation is granted programme by programme: a school with the DP is not automatically authorised for the PYP or the MYP. Authorisation says nothing about exam results. And candidate school status is not yet an IB World School: the check is simple, either the school is in the search or it is not.
In our ranking: 448 schools in 18 countries: Reigate Grammar School Vietnam, Escola Internacional de Alphaville, European Azerbaijan School (EAS), European School, Australian International School Saigon, Concordian International School, Hanoi International School, Tashkent International School (TIS) and 440 more.

Cambridge

Cambridge International Education, part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment · United Kingdom, Cambridge · roots going back to 1858

What it does to the school: It registers a school to run one or more of its stages: Cambridge Primary from 5 to 11, Cambridge Lower Secondary from 11 to 14, IGCSE from 14 to 16 and AS and A Level from 16 to 18. The stages run one after another and are bought separately, so a school may follow Cambridge in the senior years only and its own national curriculum lower down - which is how it usually goes. The IGCSE and A Level papers are set and marked by Cambridge, not by the school, and A Level results are what British and many other universities admit on. Cambridge calls what it does registration rather than accreditation, and its own website heads the section that way: this is admission to a network of providers, not a judgement on an institution. The network holds about ten thousand schools in more than 160 countries.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, but a short one: the approval visit usually takes half a day and is made by the local Cambridge representative. For comparison, CIS, MSA and NEASC send a team for three to five days. Cambridge aims to get from application to decision within three months.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no published interval for re-inspection. The status is kept up by an annual fee. That does not mean no checks happen at all - it means Cambridge does not publish how often they do.
Where to check a school yourself: Find a Cambridge school → Two warnings about what this search returns. First, a "centre" here is not the same thing as a school: alongside schools it lists exam centres attached to tutoring courses, legal entities and the same school twice under two spellings. Second, it gives no towns and no addresses at all, only the name of the centre, the country and whether private candidates are accepted, so a matching name proves nothing on its own and every pair has to be confirmed by the address on the school's own website. The neighbouring "Approved exam centres" page works, but it holds twelve centres worldwide.
What it does not mean: This is not an accreditation and not a verdict on the school. Registration is granted stage by stage: a school with IGCSE is not automatically registered for A Level, or the other way round. The status of an approved exam centre - a site where exams may be sat - is not the same as a registered Cambridge school either. And a school with neither status can still write "Cambridge curriculum" on its website. One more thing: the IGCSE and A Level qualifications are not awarded by Cambridge alone - Pearson Edexcel awards them too, so the words "IGCSE" and "A Level" on a school's website do not tell you whose programme it actually runs.
In our ranking: 569 schools in 18 countries: Reigate Grammar School Vietnam, Aubrick Multicultural Bilingual School, Australian International School Saigon, Singapore International School @ Gamuda Gardens, Singapore International School @ Danang, Singapore International School @ Vung Tau, Haileybury Almaty, TH School Hanoi and 561 more.

College Board

College Board, the Advanced Placement programme · United States, New York · founded in 1900, the AP programme since 1955

What it does to the school: An American non-profit. It allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript - and that permission is finer-grained than anything else on this page: it is granted not to the school but course by course, and it is tied to the particular teacher who filed the application. If that teacher leaves, the course needs a new permission. Before granting it, College Board reads the course syllabus written by the school itself.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No, and none is intended: what is examined is the submitted syllabus, not the school. Nobody travels anywhere.
How often it is confirmed again: Annually. Permissions have to be renewed every August; materials have to be submitted again when the teacher changes, when a new course is added or when the subject requirements are revised.
Where to check a school yourself: AP Course Ledger - search by country → You must choose an academic year in the ledger: without one it returns every year merged together, and a school whose authorisation ran out two years ago looks current in that view.
What it does not mean: This is not an accreditation of the school: governance, safeguarding, premises and the primary years are not part of the check at all. Nor does it speak to results: permission to run a course does not mean the pupils do well in it. And the letters AP on a website mean nothing by themselves: check the ledger, where you can also see which subjects are actually approved.
In our ranking: 219 schools in 15 countries: European School, Saigon South International School, Vinschool Imperia, Vinschool Ocean Park, British International School of Tbilisi (BIST), Zaman School, Almaty International School (QSI), Coree International School and 211 more.

Pearson

Pearson Edexcel · United Kingdom

What it does to the school: A commercial exam board. Approved centre status means, in Pearson's own words, that the organisation has "satisfied itself that there are adequate facilities and resources to run the examinations". What is examined is the premises, the equipment, the minimum teaching staff for a programme, the secure storage of exam materials and the presence of trained invigilators. Teaching quality, results and care for pupils do not come into it. Three quite different things live under one Pearson name, and the centre registry mixes them together: the school qualifications of Edexcel - IGCSE, AS and A Level; the vocational BTECs - from entry level to level seven, that is to postgraduate, graded Pass, Merit, Distinction and Distinction*, assessed mostly by the teacher, built on industry standards and addressed to working adults as much as to schoolchildren; and the business LCCI qualifications of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry in accounting, finance and business English, for adults.
Whether anyone comes to the school: In the United Kingdom centres must admit a JCQ inspection - but that checks how exams are run, not how pupils are taught. Whether Pearson visits international centres is not stated publicly.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no fixed term. All that is said is that the status is "renewed periodically"; it is withdrawn if a centre runs no exams for two years.
Where to check a school yourself: Find a Pearson centre → Pearson warns outright that the list is incomplete: it holds only the centres that agreed to be shown. A school's absence proves nothing.
What it does not mean: This is not an accreditation, not an inspection and not an opinion about the school. Any school able to run an exam securely can hold it. Together with "Cambridge centre" these are the two statuses most often passed off in marketing as a quality accreditation. And separately: a "Pearson centre" is not necessarily a school at all. Of Pearson's three lines only Edexcel is about school education; BTEC and LCCI are held mostly by universities, language centres, vocational academies and consultancies. So we read an entry in the Pearson registry together with what kind of institution it belongs to, not instead of that.
In our ranking: 90 schools in 12 countries: TH School Hanoi, Prem Tinsulanonda International School, The Grammar School, St. George's British-Georgian School, PASCAL English School Lefkosia, Tara Pattana International School, The English School of Kyrenia, St Andrews International School, Green Valley and 82 more.

Nova Scotia programme

Nova Scotia International Schools Program, the education department of the province of Nova Scotia · Canada

What it does to the school: Permission for a school abroad to run the curriculum of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and to award its high school leaving certificate - the same document that leavers receive in Canada itself. The conditions: teaching in English, the provincial curriculum, and teachers certified in Nova Scotia.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No description of inspection visits is publicly available. There is one indirect sign of the province being present in the school: the list names a principal for each school, and some of those principals have email addresses on the domain of the Nova Scotia school system.
How often it is confirmed again: No public information.
Where to check a school yourself: list of schools permitted to run the Nova Scotia programme → The list gives the name, the full address and the principal's name, but neither a date nor a term for the permission.
What it does not mean: The programme usually occupies the senior years and runs alongside the national curriculum of the country: only that part of the school is covered. And it is not to be confused with the Nova Scotia International Student Program, which is about foreign pupils coming to Canada itself.
In our ranking: 1 school in 1 country: Canadian School of Tashkent.

British Columbia programme

British Columbia Offshore School Program, the ministry of education and child care of the province of British Columbia · Canada

What it does to the school: Permission for a school abroad to run the curriculum of the Canadian province of British Columbia and to award its leaving certificate - the B.C. Graduation Certificate, also known as the Dogwood Diploma, the same document that leavers receive in Canada itself. With few exceptions, only teachers certified in British Columbia may teach it. Each school has an assigned representative who links it to the ministry.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, and that is rare among programme providers: the ministry carries out an annual inspection in every school with its own inspectors and publishes the inspection reports on its website. The school also files an annual report.
How often it is confirmed again: One year. The certification agreement is signed annually, and a school that stops meeting the requirements loses the status.
Where to check a school yourself: list of certified British Columbia offshore schools → The list names the school, the town, the operator and the representative, but shows neither the stages covered nor the date the agreement began.
What it does not mean: This is permission for a programme, not a judgement on the whole school, and it usually covers only the part of the school where the Canadian programme runs: a national curriculum almost always runs alongside it. The ministry itself warns, in a line of its own, that some schools online cite this certification wrongly, and that it applies only to schools currently in an agreement with the province. Check the list rather than the school's word. And do not confuse it with the programmes of other Canadian provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island each have their own, and a school of one province is not a school of another.
In our ranking: 2 schools in 2 countries: Canadian International School - Astana, British Columbia International School Bangkok.

UK ENIC

UK ENIC, the United Kingdom's national information centre for international qualifications · United Kingdom

What it does to the school: This is about a qualification, not about a school, and the difference is fundamental. UK ENIC issues a Statement of Comparability - a statement of what a foreign qualification corresponds to in the British system. It is ordered by a person, not by an institution. The work is done under contract with the Department for Education by a private company, Ecctis.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. Nobody visits the school.
How often it is confirmed again: Not applicable.
Where to check a school yourself: We found no public registry that a parent could use to check a school.
What it does not mean: A school cannot be "accredited by ENIC": no such service exists and ENIC keeps no registry of schools. The most such a phrase can stand for is that somebody once obtained a comparability statement for a certificate from this school, or that the school subscribes to the ENIC databases. ENIC itself notes that its statements are not legal documents and are advisory in nature.
In our ranking: 1 school in 1 country: Ayb School.

Russian state accreditation

Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science, state accreditation of educational activity · Russia, Moscow · founded in 2004

What it does to the school: Russian state accreditation. It is granted not to the school as a whole but to its educational programmes: the law on education has it carried out for the main programmes delivered in line with the federal state educational standards, and its purpose is to confirm that they match those standards. For a family the practical meaning is single and large: on an accredited programme a leaver receives the Russian state-issued certificate, the document Russian universities admit on. The nearest equivalent on this page is the French homologation: the same recognition of its own curriculum abroad by the state that sets it. Institutions outside Russia are accredited by the service itself and are gathered in the registry under a code of their own, for educational institutions located outside the Russian Federation.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No visit is intended. Since March 2022 the assessment is built on accreditation indicators, and the data for them is taken from documents on the institution's official website, from monitoring exercises and from statistical returns - the school does not even have to prepare extra materials. No separate description of the procedure for institutions abroad is publicly available.
How often it is confirmed again: A discrepancy has to be named here. The general rule since March 2022 is that state accreditation has no expiry: it no longer has to be renewed every six years, and in its place came accreditation monitoring, a remote observation once every three years that the institution itself takes no part in. But for schools abroad the certificate entry does carry a term of validity, and always twelve years: one issued in December 2023 runs to December 2035, one issued in July 2024 to July 2036. Why they have a term while institutions inside Russia do not is not explained publicly, and we will not guess. For a reader the conclusion is simple: an entry for a school abroad has an end date, and it is visible in the registry. Accreditation can also be withdrawn earlier if breaches are not put right after enforcement action.
Where to check a school yourself: Registry of accredited educational programmes → You have to search under the region for educational institutions located outside the Russian Federation; the country is not a field of its own and is caught with the location filter. And the main thing: the registry names legal entities, not schools. A school may appear in it under a company name that gives no clue either way.
What it does not mean: This is not permission to operate as a school: the right to operate comes from the licence of the host country, while accreditation grants only the right to award the Russian document. It is granted level by level, so a school can be accredited for lower secondary and not for upper secondary - that is, take a child to year nine and not to the final certificate. About teaching quality, premises, safeguarding and the school's international programme, if it has one, accreditation says nothing: the indicators measure conformity with the Russian standard. And a school's absence from the registry does not mean it runs no Russian programme - the certificate can be obtained through the state examinations at an exam centre abroad without being a pupil of an accredited institution.
In our ranking: 20 schools in 5 countries: Российско-таджикская школа имени К. Д. Ушинского, Российско-таджикская школа имени М. В. Ломоносова, Российско-таджикская школа имени Д. И. Менделеева, Российско-таджикская школа имени Ю. А. Гагарина, Российско-таджикская школа имени А. П. Чехова, Школа Газпром Кыргызстан, Школа Ломоносова, Частная Международная школа им. Пушкина and 12 more.

MEB

Overseas schools of the Turkish Ministry of National Education, the "Yurt Dışı Okullarımız" list of the Directorate General for Higher and Overseas Education · Turkey, Ankara

What it does to the school: The first thing to say is how this entry differs from everything else on the page: the ministry is not inspecting somebody else's school, it is listing its own. The school was opened by the Turkish education ministry, follows the Turkish national curriculum in Turkish, is kept in the state e-Okul system and takes its leavers to the Turkish leaving certificate. Every school on the list has its own institution number and a website in the state meb.k12.tr zone. The nearest equivalent on this page is Russian state accreditation: the same recognition of its own curriculum abroad by the state that sets it. In structure it is closest to the directly managed French schools of AEFE, with one difference: AEFE has homologation with inspections, while here the school belongs to the ministry from the outset and there is no outside body with grounds to inspect it.
Whether anyone comes to the school: There is no outside inspection and there cannot be: the school is an institution of the ministry itself and oversight of it is internal. How such schools are opened, how teachers are posted from Turkey and how internal control works is not set out publicly on any single page, and we will not invent it. What is checkable is something else, and it is enough for our threshold: the school is named on the ministry's list and holds a state domain.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no cycle of confirmation - this is not an accreditation with a term but a list of operating institutions. It is updated by editing the page, and the date of the last edit is shown on it: 4 February 2025. Hence caution in both directions: a school may have opened after that date and not yet be on the list, or have closed and still be on it. So we confirm every entry against the school's own live website as well.
Where to check a school yourself: The ministry's list of its overseas schools → Not a search but a single page in Turkish: countries run one after another, with a list of schools and links under each. Two fine points. The list includes Turkish language teaching centres alongside the schools, and those are not full-day schools. And one website often serves several institutions at once.
What it does not mean: This is not an international accreditation and not a judgement on the school at all: a school gets onto the list by belonging to the ministry, not by passing an inspection. The curriculum is Turkish and taught in Turkish, the certificate is Turkish - it is not equivalent to an international diploma such as the IB or A Levels, and its recognition in a third country is a separate matter. The list says nothing about fees, about whether the school takes a child with no Turkish, or about how many pupils it has: all of that is on the school's own website. And a Turkish school's absence from the list does not mean it does not exist: private schools following the Turkish curriculum do not belong to the ministry and are listed elsewhere.
In our ranking: 7 schools in 4 countries: Турецкая средняя школа и лицей в Ташкенте, Кыргызско-турецкий женский профессиональный лицей, Турецкая школа в Баку, Турецкая школа в Бишкеке, Кыргызско-турецкий анатолийский лицей, Турецкая начальная школа в Ташкенте, Турецкая школа в Батуми.

MGIMO Russian schools

Russian International Schools, a project of MGIMO University · Russia, Moscow · founded in 2021

What it does to the school: A project of MGIMO University run by its Gorchakov Lyceum, launched in 2021 under the state Priority 2030 programme. A Russian curriculum is built into a partner school abroad, and the teaching is blended: distance modules on the IBLS platform plus face-to-face sessions with teachers from the Gorchakov Lyceum and from the school itself. A leaver can end up with two certificates, that of the country of residence and the Russian one. There are three formats of participation and they differ greatly: the full face-to-face programme, blended or distance classes on top of the school's own curriculum, and simple methodological support. Of the project's ten schools abroad, three run the full face-to-face programme.
Whether anyone comes to the school: There is no public description of any inspection of partner schools.
How often it is confirmed again: No public information.
Where to check a school yourself: List of schools in the project → The map of schools does not show the format of participation - that is set out separately, on the about page. The difference between the full face-to-face programme and methodological support is invisible in the general list, and it is the decisive one.
What it does not mean: This is not an accreditation and not a verdict on the school: there is no inspection of the institution here at all. Nor is it the school itself - in structure the project is closer to a programme provider coming into someone else's school than to a network. The Russian certificate is not awarded by the partner school: it comes through the Russian state examinations at an exam centre abroad, which a candidate can register for without being a pupil of a project school. So taking part in the project does not in itself mean the school holds Russian accreditation, or that the Russian curriculum is taught here face to face.
In our ranking: 6 schools in 5 countries: Школа Ломоносова, Лицей МГИМО-Ташкент, Гимназия имени А.Г. Ерицяна при филиале МГУ, Первая русская международная школа имени В. В. Терешковой, Частная Московская Международная школа в Силифке, Академический лицей «Интерхаус».

Networks, associations and operators

A network is something a school joins; an accreditation is something a school goes through. The difference is not in strictness but in subject: a network checks whether the school shares its values and has paid the fee, not whether children are safe and teachers can teach. Within this group the schools differ enormously, and below it is said who inspects for real and who does not inspect at all.

ICA

International Curriculum Association, formerly Fieldwork Education · United Kingdom, London · the IPC was published in 2000, the present name dates from 2024

What it does to the school: The owner of three international programmes: the IEYC for the early years, the IPC from 5 to 11 and the IMYC from 11 to 14. The IPC was devised in the late 1990s by teachers in international schools with the support of Shell's education arm and published as a programme in its own right in 2000. The organisation calls itself the accreditation arm of Fieldwork Education and says it works with more than a thousand schools in over ninety countries. It does have an accreditation - but it is about how the school has implemented the programme, not about the school as a whole: governance, finances and safeguarding are not part of it.
Whether anyone comes to the school: The organisation publishes no description of how it inspects, who is on the team or how long a visit lasts.
How often it is confirmed again: No public information.
Where to check a school yourself: We found no public registry that a parent could use to check a school.
What it does not mean: This entry does not clear our threshold, for two reasons. First, the organisation is not independent. Its legal entity is WCL Group Limited, and WCL Group was bought by Nord Anglia Education in 2013; the IPC was expressly part of the deal. Nord Anglia today holds more than eighty schools in 37 countries, and some of them run the IPC - so a school operator owns the organisation that accredits those same schools. The second reason is simpler: there is no public list of accredited schools, so a parent cannot check a school's claim at source. The letters "IPC" on a school's website mean nothing in themselves: the programme can be bought and taught with no accreditation at all.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

FOBISIA

Federation of British International Schools in Asia · registered in Singapore, head office in Thailand · founded in 1988

What it does to the school: The strictest entry in this group, and that should be said plainly. 109 schools in twenty countries across Asia. Membership is either full, where the school is already accredited by a recognised body, or associate, where it undertakes to begin accreditation within three years. The criteria cover Britishness, governance, safeguarding and quality assurance.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a two-day visit by two representatives appointed by the FOBISIA board before the vote on admission.
How often it is confirmed again: Membership requires a live external inspection: associate schools must complete one within three years, full members must renew at least once every five years. BSO, ISI, EDT, COBIS, CIS, NEASC and WASC are recognised.
Where to check a school yourself: FOBISIA schools → The list does not separate full members from associates, so it cannot tell you whether a school is already accredited or only intending to be.
What it does not mean: FOBISIA does not inspect quality itself - it requires that somebody else has. So what to look at is that accreditation, not the federation's badge. But the badge cannot be called empty: a member school almost certainly holds an accreditation.
In our ranking: 13 schools in 4 countries: Reigate Grammar School Vietnam, Haileybury Almaty, Haileybury Astana, Brighton College Vietnam, The ABC International School, British International School Ho Chi Minh City, Renaissance International School Saigon, British International School Hanoi and 5 more.

CEESA

Central and Eastern European Schools Association · Central and Eastern Europe

What it does to the school: An association of international schools in the region, with about thirty members. Under its constitution a full member must be accredited by CIS, NEASC, MSA, WASC or Cognia - so here accreditation is a condition of entry, not an outcome. CEESA itself runs mostly conferences, professional development and competitions: robotics, football, volleyball, tennis, debating.
Whether anyone comes to the school: A review of documents and interviews with the school's leadership. A visit happens "if needed", which is to say it is not required.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no periodic review. Membership ends on request, for unpaid fees, or by decision of the executive committee.
Where to check a school yourself: CEESA members → The page is loaded by a script and we could not read it without a browser.
What it does not mean: CEESA has no accreditation, inspection or quality assessment of its own. The badge reads correctly as "this school holds an accreditation from CIS, NEASC, MSA, WASC or Cognia" - and that is what to look at. The constitution also allows a school to be admitted by a three-quarters majority even if it does not fully meet the criteria.
In our ranking: 14 schools in 12 countries: Tashkent International School (TIS), Bishkek International School (BIS), International School of Belgrade, Almaty International School (QSI), Walworth Barbour American International School in Israel, QSI International School of Montenegro, The International School of Azerbaijan (TISA), Baku International School (QSI) and 6 more.

Round Square

Round Square · United Kingdom, Windsor · the first conference was held in 1967

What it does to the school: A network of about three hundred schools in some fifty countries, built on the educational ideas of Kurt Hahn and six principles: internationalism, democracy, environment, adventure, leadership, service. The check on joining is a real one, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes. Representatives of the network spend up to a day in the school, talk to the leadership, the teachers, the pupils and the governors, and write a report afterwards. Then come up to two years as a candidate, and only then full membership.
How often it is confirmed again: Annual confirmation and a self-review every five years. A protocol for member visits is among the mandatory documents of the agreement.
Where to check a school yourself: Round Square schools → The list does not separate candidates from full members.
What it does not mean: What is checked is fidelity to the principles, not the quality of the school. Academic standards, safeguarding and governance are not judged against published standards, reports are not published, and Round Square does not call itself an accreditation. The five-year review is a self-review: the school assesses itself.
In our ranking: 10 schools in 6 countries: Aubrick Multicultural Bilingual School, Anania Shirakatsy Armenian National Lyceum, Regent's International School Bangkok, Rasami British International School, Belgrano Day School, Holy Trinity College, Godspell College, Michael Ham Memorial College and 2 more.

UWC

United World Colleges · an international movement, offices in London and Berlin

What it does to the school: Not an association that schools join but a movement of eighteen colleges on four continents. A new UWC does not join, it is founded: a five-stage route over two to six years, with requirements on governance, non-profit status, endowment and the selection of pupils on merit regardless of what their families can pay.
Whether anyone comes to the school: New schools are approved by the international UWC board. Whether the status of existing colleges is ever reviewed is not stated publicly.
How often it is confirmed again: No public information.
Where to check a school yourself: UWC colleges →
What it does not mean: UWC status is not an accreditation and does not extend to other schools. One thing is worth knowing separately: many schools around the world claim a "link to UWC" through the national committees that select pupils for places at the colleges. That is not the same thing. There are exactly eighteen real UWCs, and they are all on one page.
In our ranking: 2 schools in 2 countries: UWC Dilijan, UWC Thailand International School.

PASCH

The "Schulen: Partner der Zukunft" initiative · Germany · founded in 2008

What it does to the school: A state initiative of the German foreign ministry rather than an association: more than two thousand schools in about 120 countries. Five very different categories sit under one umbrella, and that confusion is exactly why this page is worth reading.
Whether anyone comes to the school: A school cannot apply: participants are chosen by ZfA and the Goethe-Institut in agreement with the embassy. There is no fee, this is a support programme.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no term, and no review procedure is described publicly.
Where to check a school yourself: Map of PASCH schools → Useful precisely because it shows the category of each school. Without the category a PASCH badge tells you almost nothing.
What it does not mean: Of the roughly two thousand PASCH schools, about 1,700 are Fit-Schulen and DSD-Schulen, that is ordinary national schools that teach German well. There are only about 135 German schools abroad that teach in German and award the Abitur. The German quality inspection applies to those alone. So "a PASCH school" in itself means neither a German curriculum nor the right to award a German certificate.
In our ranking: 5 schools in 4 countries: Deutsche Internationale Schule Tbilissi, International German School Ho Chi Minh City (IGS), Deutsche Schule Belgrad, Colégio Imperatriz Dona Leopoldina, Deutsche Schule Curitiba.

WDA

Weltverband Deutscher Auslandsschulen e.V. · Germany · founded in 2003

What it does to the school: An association of the bodies that run German schools abroad: 157 members, representing about 87 per cent of the 135 recognised German schools abroad. In essence an industry lobby and a service organisation for school owners.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. Admission is decided by the board, and the constitution states outright that there is no right to membership and that a refusal is not explained.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no review.
Where to check a school yourself: WDA member schools →
What it does not mean: WDA does not inspect, does not accredit and does not judge quality. The condition of admission is a recognised German certificate, but that recognition is granted by the German state through the KMK and ZfA, not by WDA. The badge rests on somebody else's decision and adds nothing of its own to it.
In our ranking: 28 schools in 9 countries: Escola Alemã Corcovado (Deutsche Schule Rio de Janeiro), Colegio Alemán de Temuco, Instituto Ballester (Deutsche Schule Villa Ballester), Asociación Cultural Pestalozzi, Instituto Alemán Carlos Anwandter, Ernst-Reuter-Schule Ankara, Deutsche Internationale Schule Tbilissi, Deutsche Schule Montevideo and 20 more.

Maarif

Türkiye Maarif Vakfı, the Turkish Maarif Foundation · Turkey · founded in 2016 by act of the Turkish parliament

What it does to the school: Not an accrediting body but an owner and operator of schools. It was created by law in June 2016 and describes itself as the only body authorised to carry out Turkish educational activity abroad. Estimates of its size differ: in June 2025 the foundation itself spoke of more than 70,000 pupils in 55 countries, while an academic source for 2023 gives 427 institutions in 49 countries.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Not applicable: the foundation runs its schools directly. An independent school cannot apply to "become a Maarif school".
How often it is confirmed again: Not applicable.
Where to check a school yourself: We found no public registry that a parent could use to check a school.
What it does not mean: "A Maarif school" tells you who owns the school and under whose state auspices it operates, and nothing about the quality of its teaching. The network grew in two ways: through intergovernmental agreements, and through the transfer of schools formerly linked to the Gülen movement after 2016. Individual Maarif schools may hold accreditations of their own - those are the ones to look at.
In our ranking: 10 schools in 3 countries: United World International School, International Maarif Schools Georgia, Токмокский лицей имени Жусупа Баласагына, Бишкекский лицей «Айчурек», Лицей имени Жайыла Баатыра, Джалал-Абадский лицей имени Курманбека Баатыра, Джалал-Абадский лицей имени Зууры Нурматовой, Бишкекский лицей имени Чингиза Айтматова and 2 more.

SABIS

SABIS Educational Systems · Lebanon, Choueifat · traces its history to 1886

What it does to the school: A commercial education operator: more than 70,000 pupils in 21 countries. It works in five different ways, and the differences matter: its own private schools, full management of somebody else's school under contract, public-private partnerships, charter schools in the United States, and licensing - where the school stays under its own management and simply buys the curriculum, the monitoring system and the methods.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. The relationship is set out in a commercial contract, either management or a licence. No public criteria for selection or assessment exist.
How often it is confirmed again: The terms and durations of the contracts are not published.
Where to check a school yourself: The SABIS school network → The directory honestly marks the type of each school, and that is a rarity: it shows whether SABIS runs the school or has only sold it the programme.
What it does not mean: This is a commercial brand and a programme licence, not an accreditation. Under the licensing model SABIS neither owns nor runs the school: the badge means a package was bought, not that anyone vouches for how the school works. The SABIS internal monitoring system is a management tool of its own, not an external inspection.
In our ranking: 2 schools in 2 countries: SABIS SUN International School, SABIS International School - Campinas.

NCUK

The Northern Consortium · United Kingdom, Manchester · founded in 1987

What it does to the school: A consortium preparing pupils for British universities: more than 135 study centres in over 35 countries and more than 80 partner universities. The check when a centre is accredited is a real one - an academic head is appointed or approved, NCUK representatives inspect the classrooms, laboratories, library and IT, they assess the administration of the course, and the teachers on NCUK programmes are approved by the organisation itself.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes, a visit to inspect premises and resources. The whole route takes three to six months.
How often it is confirmed again: How often the check is repeated is not published. The annual fee covers quality assurance, but there is no cycle in years.
Where to check a school yourself: NCUK study centres →
What it does not mean: What is checked is the ability to run NCUK programmes, not the school. Primary and secondary classes, safeguarding and governance are not part of the assessment. A partner can even be a private investor with no school at all. The progression figures on offer are counted among those who already passed selection, that is among the survivors, and they are not a place at a university.
In our ranking: 4 schools in 2 countries: Nguyen Sieu School, Sedbergh Vietnam, Landau School, Vinschool Times City.

Ardingly College

A partnership with the British school Ardingly College · United Kingdom

What it does to the school: Not an organisation that inspects anyone but a British school whose name and methods are used under contract. It is on this page because it turns up in our data: that is more honest than hiding it under the word "accreditation".
Whether anyone comes to the school: No public information.
How often it is confirmed again: No public information.
Where to check a school yourself: We found no public registry that a parent could use to check a school.
What it does not mean: A partnership with, or a franchise of, a well-known school does not mean that anyone independent has inspected the school in the other country. A name on the gate is a contract, not an inspection.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

ECIS

Educational Collaborative for International Schools, until 2016 the European Council of International Schools · United Kingdom, London · founded in 1965

What it does to the school: A membership body of international schools, and the first thing to know is that ECIS has not done accreditation since 2003. It accredited schools from 1971, then decided at the turn of the century to separate that work, and in 2003 the legal split happened - that is when CIS, the Council of International Schools, was born as a separate organisation for accreditation and recruitment. CIS stands higher on this page as an accreditor, and the two must not be confused: they have been different legal entities for twenty-three years. The name changed twice. In 2012, when the organisation took British charitable status, the words "European Council" were not permitted under the rules, and it became ECI Schools; in January 2016 the board of trustees changed what the acronym stands for to take the geography out of the name. The acronym was kept deliberately both times - hence the old name still on school websites. The numbers do not agree on its own website: more than 500 "membership communities" in over 80 countries against more than 425 "schools" in over 100 countries, and neither figure carries a date.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. No visit, no published standards for schools, no reports, no term of validity and no review.
How often it is confirmed again: Membership is annual and renewed by paying the fee. There is no review of quality, because there are no requirements on quality either.
Where to check a school yourself: We found no public registry that a parent could use to check a school.
What it does not mean: The ECIS badge says nothing checkable about a school, and it is a description rather than a judgement. There is no public list of member schools at all - not in the menu, not in the site map; the only public list is called Partners, and those are paying supplier companies, not schools. The application for school membership is a form with an address and card details, without a single question about the school. There are no quality categories: School, Higher Education and Commercial, and within the school category three fee levels that differ in course places and discounts. Hence our conclusion: there is nothing to check and there are no requirements, so the entry does not clear our threshold - on the same grounds as ICA. It is also worth knowing that accreditors such as NEASC and ASIC and exam boards such as College Board and Pearson are themselves paying commercial members of ECIS: this is an industry body, not an inspection of schools.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

HMC

HMC (The Heads' Conference), formerly the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference · United Kingdom, Market Harborough · founded in 1869

What it does to the school: A conference of the heads of British independent schools, with an international arm: International Membership, about 82 members, plus a separate category of International Associates (Premium and Standard) holding 9 schools. The check for entry to full international membership is a real one: two people, two days in the school, a report to the head and to the membership committee before the vote. The old name with Headmasters' and Headmistresses' appears nowhere on the website today.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes for full International Membership: two representatives, two days. The organisation does not publish a protocol for the visit - the procedure is described only in the general secretary's blog. For International Associates there is no visit.
How often it is confirmed again: No term or review procedure is described publicly.
Where to check a school yourself: HMC schools → One of the best lists in this group: there is a Membership column and filters for British Isles, International and Associate, so the category is visible.
What it does not mean: The main point about this badge: it is a person who becomes a member, not a school. Membership is "offered to the Head", and in some categories the logo is expressly marked for personal use. So an HMC badge on a school's website means its head belongs to the conference, not that the school was inspected. The school holds the status through its head and loses it with them. No live external inspection is publicly required for international membership: BSO, COBIS, EDT and Penta are not named in the conditions at all. And one more trap: the parent HMC page states that all HMC schools are inspected by ISI - that does not apply to international members, since ISI inspects schools in Britain.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

IAPS

IAPS, formerly the Independent Association of Prep Schools · United Kingdom, Warwick · the organisation does not publish its year of foundation

What it does to the school: An association of the heads of British preparatory schools, registered charity number 187052. It has no separate international category: a school abroad joins the same full membership, and only the fee band for schools outside Britain is separate. The list holds 622 entries, 51 of them outside Britain.
Whether anyone comes to the school: There is no visit of its own. The only visit is a one-day consultancy, and the website itself notes that this is not a compliance judgement and not a mock inspection.
How often it is confirmed again: Re-accreditation is "closely tied to the inspection cycle" - that is, to somebody else's inspection cycle, not its own.
Where to check a school yourself: IAPS schools → The list shows neither the membership category nor a country filter, so it cannot tell a British school from one abroad, or full membership from personal.
What it does not mean: IAPS has no quality inspection of its own, and somebody else's is not required: a live BSO inspection is called "desirable", and which other inspectorates the committee accepts is not published. The badge reads much like CEESA's, only weaker: at CEESA accreditation is at least a condition of entry, while here it is a wish. As at HMC, the member is the head: the other two categories are personal ones, for deputies and chief operating officers.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

TISAC

Thailand International Schools Activities Conference · Thailand · the organisation does not publish its year of foundation

What it does to the school: A sports and festival association of international schools in Thailand: swimming galas, leagues, Battle of the Bands, debating. It is the purest club on this whole page, and that is exactly why we describe it - on a Thai school's website the TISAC badge sits in the same row as accreditations, and a reader takes it for a sixth inspection.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No.
How often it is confirmed again: No term, no membership categories, no review.
Where to check a school yourself: TISAC schools → Not a list but the logos of fourteen schools with no categories; the league tables live on an outside platform. The organisation publishes neither its year of foundation nor its number of members: the counters on its own front page stand at zero.
What it does not mean: There is not a single condition of entry on the website. The words WASC, CIS, NEASC, Cognia, MSA and ONESQA do not appear at all, the association does not require a ministry licence, and it neither looks at the quality of a school nor claims to. An entry like this cannot clear our threshold. And separately about the address: the domain "tisac.org" does not belong to TISAC - it holds an empty directory index with an icon from 2015. If a school links to it, the link leads nowhere.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

ISAT

International Schools Association of Thailand · Thailand, Nonthaburi · founded in 1994

What it does to the school: The association of international schools in Thailand, claiming 200 schools. Entry is real, and this is the FOBISIA case: a live accreditation is a direct condition of membership. A full member needs accreditation or candidate status from a foreign agency or from ONESQA, and ten bodies are recognised by name: ACS WASC, Accreditation International, CIS, COBIS, Cognia, EDT, ISI, MSA-CESS, NEASC and NDNA. A licence from the Thai education ministry is a direct condition of entry too.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. The association writes itself that it is not an accrediting agency: it has no standards for schools, no visit, no reports and no term of validity of its own.
How often it is confirmed again: It has no cycle of its own; membership rests on somebody else's live accreditation.
Where to check a school yourself: ISAT schools → The membership category is not visible in the list, and the data in it is supplied by the schools themselves.
What it does not mean: The ISAT badge is not empty, but it means something other than it appears to: it reads correctly as "this school almost certainly holds an accreditation from one of the ten named bodies", and that is what to look at. The association itself checks nothing. And the main trap: there are two membership categories, full member and candidate, and the list does not tell them apart - so it cannot distinguish a fully accredited school from one that has only started the route, and a school can remain a candidate for up to five years.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

EARCOS

East Asia Regional Council of Schools · Philippines, Manila · two dates are given: 1968 in the constitution, 1958 on the membership pages

What it does to the school: An association of schools in East and South-East Asia: 229 schools, 155 organisations and 44 individuals in the 2024-2025 school year. Entry is strict on paper: external accreditation is the second of the five steps of an application, from a closed list of nine bodies (ACSI, Cognia AdvancED, CIS, COBIS, CfBT-OfSted, MSA, NASAC, NEASC, WASC). There are four membership categories, only Regular members have a vote, and schools in the Associate Institutional category are not admitted at all.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. Entry is on documents alone. The visiting teams EARCOS takes part in are other people's: it supplies its own people to WASC visiting teams.
How often it is confirmed again: No term or review of its own is described publicly.
Where to check a school yourself: EARCOS schools → There are three lists - schools, organisations and individuals - but within the school list Regular and Affiliate are not marked, so the category cannot be seen.
What it does not mean: As with ISAT, the association does not inspect the school itself but requires that one of the nine has. The badge reads correctly as "look at that accreditation". And it is worth knowing about independence: the EARCOS secretariat sits on the grounds of Brent International School, and three Brent schools are its members.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

ONESQA

Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment, สมศ. · Thailand · founded in 1999, under the education act of the same year

What it does to the school: Not an association and not an accreditor but a compulsory state quality assessment. Under section 49 of the 1999 education act every Thai school goes through it without exception, at least once every five years; only universities take it on application. The rounds run one after another: the first 2001-2005, the second 2006-2010, the third 2011-2015, the fourth 2016-2020, the pandemic period 2021-2023, and now the fifth, 2024-2028. International schools form a separate branch with guidance of their own for 2025-2029.
Whether anyone comes to the school: Yes: the school files a self-assessment through the e-SAR system, and then certified external assessors visit. The composition and length of the visit are not described publicly.
How often it is confirmed again: At least once every five years, by law.
Where to check a school yourself: The ONESQA website → There are public lists, but they are lists of the schools due for assessment, with the names of the assessors. There are no results by school and no search by school: the results page is empty and only universities are published.
What it does not mean: An ONESQA badge does not set a school apart from any other school in Thailand, because every school goes through the assessment. It is not an assessment of the institution but a description of the law. A parent has nothing to check it against either: the agency does not publish results by school. So the entry does not clear our threshold - but it is worth knowing about, because otherwise a compulsory state procedure on a school's website reads as a distinction of its own.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

ESSARP

Educadores Asociados del Rio de la Plata · Argentina, Buenos Aires · the association does not publish its year of foundation; a Cambridge exam centre since 1982

What it does to the school: An association of bilingual schools in Argentina and Uruguay, and more than thirty Argentine schools name it on their websites. It runs professional development, courses and competitions. But the main thing is this: ESSARP sets no exams of its own, it is a Cambridge exam centre - since 1982, with the Cambridge Associate and English Platinum AEC marks in the footer of its own website.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No. The association publishes no conditions of admission and requires no external accreditation.
How often it is confirmed again: There is no term and no review.
Where to check a school yourself: ESSARP schools → A good list: five sections, and the category is visible in it - Member, Affiliate, Distant Affiliate, Cambridge English Exam Schools and Cambridge International Exam Schools, more than two hundred rows in all.
What it does not mean: The word "ESSARP" on an Argentine school's website often means not membership but only "we sit Cambridge exams through this centre": two of the five sections of its own list are exam schools rather than members. An exam centre passes no judgement on the quality of a school at all, and we do not count such entries. What stands behind the badge can be checked in the list: the category is named there, and that is a rarity in this group.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

ABSCh

Asociacion de Colegios Britanicos en Chile, the Association of British Schools in Chile · Chile · founded on 25 November 1977

What it does to the school: The association of British schools in Chile: 22 schools, 23,500 pupils. It runs shared events and exchanges of practice.
Whether anyone comes to the school: No.
How often it is confirmed again: No term, no review, no membership categories.
Where to check a school yourself: The ABSCh website → There is a Schools section in the menu, but the page returns an error, and no list of schools by name is available: a school's claim cannot be checked against it.
What it does not mean: The association calls itself an association of British schools, but it requires no inspection of its members and does not mention BSO, ISI, EDT or COBIS at all. So the word "British" here is about a school's tradition, not about a British inspection. There is no list by name, so even the membership is beyond a parent's reach to check. The entry does not clear our threshold.
In our ranking: No schools yet.

What is not an accreditation, though it looks like one

These are the phrases that turn up most often on school websites, and they all sound weighty. Not one of them means that anybody has inspected the school.

An exam centre. Permission to run exams on the school's own premises. What is checked is the secure storage of papers and the presence of trained invigilators, not the teaching.
A candidate. Candidate school status at the IB, candidate status at NEASC, associate membership of FOBISIA - all mean the route has been started, not completed. At NEASC, MSA and COBIS candidates are visible in the registry itself; at the IB they are not, because its registry shows authorised schools only, and candidate status has to be taken from the official notice the IB requires such a school to display. We do take these schools into the ranking and write "candidate" on the card, but we score the minimum on that criterion.
Membership instead of accreditation. CIS, COBIS and Cognia all sell a membership behind which there is no external inspection whatsoever. This is the thing most often passed off as an accreditation. For us it weighs exactly as much as candidacy, and for the same reason: the organisation knows about the school but has not vouched for it.
A franchise, or the name of a famous school. A contract for the use of a name and some methods. It says nothing about how the school in the other country works.
A comparability statement for a diploma. A UK ENIC statement concerns the qualification of one particular person, not an institution. A school cannot be "accredited by ENIC".
Accreditation of a group or a system. At MSA a branch counts as a continuation of the main institution; at Cognia the whole system is accredited. A badge on one campus may rest on an inspection that took place in another city.

Where this comes from

Everything written here comes from the organisations' own websites: their descriptions of their procedures, their constitutions, their regulations and their public registries. Every organisation that has a registry has a link to it, and the link goes to the source rather than to our retelling.

Where an organisation contradicts itself, we say so instead of picking the convenient figure. At CIS the length of the cycle differs between the current questions-and-answers section and the document on the accreditation framework. At MSA the timings of the procedure differ between two of its own pages. Several registries - Cognia, CIS, COBIS, CEESA - open only with scripts enabled, and we could not check what is in them; that is said next to the link.

Found a mistake, or data that has moved on? Write to hello@skolbera.com - we will put it right and say when we did. Places in the ranking are not for sale, and neither are entries in this guide.