A school's score is built from verifiable data, not from advertising. Below are all nine criteria with their weights, the formulas, the sources, and the things we do not know today. This page describes the rules in force: when a formula changes, this page changes with it.
A school profile always names one city. There are never two cities behind a comma. The other campuses of a group live as separate profiles in their own cities: each has its own score, its own fees, its own accreditation and its own reviews.
It works this way because a parent is not choosing a legal entity but the building their child walks into every morning: its own teachers, its own canteen, its own journey to school. Merging two cities into one profile would average two different schools and tell an untruth about both - and a review of the campus in one city would stick to the campus in the other.
Several buildings within one city stay a single profile: usually they are the stages of one school, the younger years in one building and the senior years in another, with the child moving between them without changing school. Where two buildings in a city turn out to be genuinely independent - their own admissions, their own fees, their own accreditation - they get separate profiles, but we settle those cases one at a time.
A new city brings a picture with it, and that follows a rule too: we draw the city covers ourselves and never use photographs.They are all made in one manner: a flat silhouette of the skyline, the same arcade along the bottom, its own shade for each city. A real photograph among them looks out of place, and, more to the point, a photograph has to be taken from someone, which puts another party's property in a prominent place. The drawing is ours, and it is borrowed from no one.
There are three conditions, and all three are required.
First: the school holds at least one record from a named organisation that has examined it. That is either accreditation of the institution (CIS, MSA, NEASC, Cognia, ACS WASC, COBIS, BSO, ACSI, AEFE, ZfA and state bodies such as the Georgian NCEQE) or an authorised programme (IB, Cambridge, Pearson, College Board, UK ENIC, the Canadian Nova Scotia programme). Every organisation we count is set out one by one in the accreditation guide, and that list is complete: an organisation missing from it does not appear here at all. A school that simply calls itself international does not enter the ranking.
Belonging to a group does not meet the threshold- neither an association such as Round Square, UWC, CEESA, FOBISIA, PASCH, WDA or NCUK, nor an owner of schools such as Maarif, SABIS, Nord Anglia, Cognita, GEMS or Inspired. The reason is the same in every case: there is no examination of the institution behind such a record. A group is joined, or bought into; accreditation is earned. We read the groups' own school lists alongside the public registers - they show which schools are still missing from ours - and where a school we find does hold an accreditation or a programme, a "part of a group" badge appears beside them on its profile. It does not stand in for the threshold and it adds no points.
Second: a school website is needed for the score, not for entry into the ranking. Four of the nine criteria - university destinations, safety, facilities, clubs and activities - plus fees are calculated only from what the school has said about itself, on its own website or on its own page on a group's site. For a school with no website they stay empty.
A school there is nothing to read about is still in the ranking - and its profile is honestly empty:it carries what the register certifies, and every section left blank says why it is blank. Such a school's score is calculated from fewer criteria, and the line "score calculated from N of 9 criteria" says so, both on the profile and in the list.
Third: it is a school a child attends every day. The ranking is built for a family that is moving and choosing where their child will go - so it does not include examination centres, language courses, university preparation courses, agencies, study abroad semester programmes, home schooling or schools that teach online only. This is no judgement on such programmes, which can be excellent: they simply answer a different question. Our criteria are about the school as a place: its building and equipment, its teachers, its safety, its clubs. Courses and examination centres have none of that, not because they are poor but because they are built differently, and there is nothing there to measure.
An important qualification to the third condition, because otherwise it reads as stricter than it is. We do not require the full age range: a school that starts at fifteen and teaches the senior years only is an ordinary school, and there are such schools in the ranking. And an online option does not by itself rule a school out: if it has a building, a timetable of its own and classes taught in person, with online teaching on top, it stays in the ranking. What rules a school out is only the case where there is no in-person school at all.
We show the status rather than hide the school. Accreditation, an authorised programme, registration as an examination centre - we take them, however modest they are. Candidate status, and membership of an organisation without its accreditation, we take as well, but under a label of their own and with the minimum score on that criterion: they mean the organisation knows of the school, not that it has vouched for it. The International Baccalaureate itself requires candidate schools to state that candidacy is no guarantee of authorisation, and we claim no more than the organisation claims - which is why such a school's profile says "candidate" and not "accredited". A family is better served by seeing a school with its status named honestly than by not seeing the school at all.
A school's absence from a register does not always mean anything. The Pearson centre search shows only those centres that have agreed to be shown, and Pearson states plainly that these are not complete lists: roughly one school in four that does hold a Pearson record is missing from that search. So "not in the Pearson register" is never a reason for us to withdraw a school's record.
A school that falls short of the status today, or whose website we have not found, is not struck off for good: it stays on the list to be looked at again, and is reconsidered the next time we come back to its country.
The threshold answers the question "is there an external, verifiable record", not "is this a good school". The second question is answered by the score, and it answers with numbers: registration as a Cambridge examination centre earns 66 on the programmes criterion, the full IB age range 95. Membership of a group, and membership of an organisation without its accreditation, drop one step down the ladder of trust, because a group is joined while accreditation is earned.
The threshold is the same in every country, and a school without such a record does not reach the site.
Some schools stand on land whose ownership is disputed. We hold no position on such disputes and do not wish to hold one: the ranking is about schools, not about borders. So a mechanical rule applies.
A school's country is taken from the register under which it is accredited. Where registers disagree with each other, we follow the ISO 3166 standard. Countries that ISO 3166 does not list, we do not create. Effective control of the territory is given in the city field and on a separate line on the school's page, with no judgement attached.
A criterion takes part in the score only where there is verifiable data. Of the nine criteria, eight are active today - that is 84 weighting pointsout of 100. The rest join as data arrives from schools and reviews come in; until then a profile says "no data" rather than zero.
| Criterion | Weight | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academics and programmes | 16% | IB, Cambridge, Pearson, College Board, AEFE and ZfA registers, state registers | counted |
| Community rating | 16% | reviews from visitors to this site, each moderated by hand | not counted yet |
| Exams and destinations | 12% | the school's own data on destinations | counted |
| Safety and wellbeing | 12% | the school's official website: security, medical care, counsellors | counted |
| Accreditation and verifiability | 10% | public registers of the organisations, school documents, state sources | counted |
| Teaching staff | 10% | the school's official website: staff list and qualifications | counted |
| Facilities | 10% | the school's official website | counted |
| Clubs and activities | 8% | the school's official website | counted |
| Value for money | 6% | the school's published fees | counted |
The base score follows the best level of verification: confirmed by a public register - 85, by a school document - 65, self-reported - 45. Plus 5 points for every additional accreditation found in a register, up to 100. Self-reported accreditations are shown on the profile but earn nothing above the minimum. Membership of a group (Round Square, UWC, CEESA, FOBISIA, PASCH, Maarif, SABIS and the like), and membership of an accrediting organisation without its accreditation (this happens with CIS, COBIS and MSA), count one step lower: those are joined, while accreditation is earned, and the two are different things. Such a record earns no extra points, but neither does it drop out of the calculation: otherwise a school with no accreditation would score higher than a school with a weak one. It gives no threshold at all - what brings a school into the ranking is an accreditation or a programme. What each organisation actually examines, and what its badge does not mean, is set out separately in the accreditation guide.
The score is set by the age from which the school carries a child through one system to graduation: from the primary stage (age 5 or earlier) - 95; from the middle years (age 11) - 88; from the pre-final stage (age 14) - 85; the senior stage only (age 16) - 82. The same age is worth the same in both systems: IB DP together with MYP, and A-Level together with Lower Secondary, cover the same ages 11-18 and earn 88 each. The 85 step exists only for Cambridge: the IB simply has no separate stage for ages 14-16, because MYP covers 11-16 in full. A single stage without the graduating one, and a stage we have not confirmed, is worth 72 in both systems.
A second graduating programme within one system is counted separately. The IB has two: the Diploma Programme and the Career-related Programme, a vocational track for the same ages 16-19, part of the DP subjects plus an applied qualification. CP is not the next rung of the ladder but a second way off it: a school that offers it does not carry a child for longer, but it offers a choice of route to a child the academic track does not suit. So for DP and CP together a school earns 3 points above its own stage - and no higher than 95, the top of the age ladder. The full range from the primary stage remains the highest result: breadth of choice at the exit cannot overtake the years a school carries a child.
A national programme with state recognition - French, German, American, Canadian, Turkish - is placed on the same ladder: it is a system like any other, with its own leaving certificate and a full age range. Today every such school sits on the bottom step, 72, meaning "the system is there, the stages are not confirmed": AEFE homologation and ZfA recognition are granted level by level and the registers show this, but the levels are not recorded in our data yet. A school will move up as the registers confirm it, and not on a guess of ours. Other programmes, with neither a state nor an organisation behind them, earn 60. Examination results will be added to this criterion once schools provide them.
The programmes we tell apart: from the IB - PYP, MYP, DP and CP; from Cambridge - Primary, Lower Secondary, IGCSE and A-Level; separately Pearson Edexcel and AP; the national ones - American, French, German, Canadian and Turkish; and schools' own programmes such as SABIS or the Armenian AB. A stage the school states but which we have not found in the organisation's register counts as unconfirmed and is worth 72, rather than disappearing.
The ladder is read from the school's best system, and every additional system earns a bonus: a system with a confirmed graduating stage - 4, a system without a confirmed exit - 2, no more than 8 in total. The reason is that a school with two systems usually offers not one child a double workload but two different children two different exits: one goes for the IB diploma, the other for British A-Levels or the national certificate. For a family choosing a school ten years ahead, that is real value. The bonus is smaller than the smallest rung of the ladder, which is worth 6, and that is deliberate: three extra years on the route the child actually takes weigh more than a spare route they will most likely never take. Breadth is a value, but not the value that depth is.
AP cannot serve as the base: it is neither a system nor a stage but a set of advanced courses on top of the school programme, with no certificate of its own and no age range. It does earn a bonus, though - 3 where the record is confirmed in the AP Course Ledger, and 1.5 where the register neither confirms nor denies it: the school states AP, and the register holds nothing either for it or against it. That happens with a branch whose group is in the register while the record is held by the head campus and lists different courses. The right to write the word AP on a transcript is granted by the College Board course by course, tied to a named teacher, with the course syllabus read and renewal required every year - in strictness that is above many accreditations, where a school is examined once every five years. Where the school is absent from the register, the bonus is not halved but zeroed: otherwise stating AP would pay better than not stating it.
The stages of the two systems are matched by age, not by count: the IB has three stages, Cambridge four, and "the graduating stage plus one below it" means different coverage in each - ages 11-18 against 14-18. The difference in depth of scrutiny between the organisations is real - the IB authorises each programme with a visit and re-evaluation every five years, while Cambridge registers the school - but that difference is measured by a criterion of its own, "Accreditation and verifiability", and marking academics down for it as well would count one fact twice. Academics measures the programme and the completeness of the age range, not the supervising body. An unconfirmed stage is worth as much as a confirmed lower one: for some schools the stages are not confirmed yet, and that is an absence of data rather than a property of the school.
Because of the bonus for breadth, the score on this criterion can go above 95: a school that runs the full Cambridge range from the age of five and also offers the IB diploma offers more than a school with one full range.
The criterion switches on at the fifth verified review. From there it works like this: the fewer reviews a school has, the more strongly its rating is pulled towards the average across the site, and the other way round - the more reviews, the more the school speaks for itself. The turning point is at about ten reviews: below it the site average weighs more, above it the school's own rating does.
Why it is done this way. Without it the ranking breaks on three reviews: a school with five delighted ratings from friends overtakes a school with two hundred honest ones, and does so legitimately, by the formula. We promise that places are not for sale, which means gaming must not work through reviews either. In practice five invented reviews of ten out of ten give the first school 70, not 100.
A school's own reviews do not go into the site average.Otherwise, while only one school has reviews, the site average equals that school's own rating, there is nothing to pull it towards, and the protection does not work at all. While no school has reviews yet, the middle of the scale stands in for the average: the review form rates from 1 to 10, so the middle is 5.5. That is not a number we chose but a property of the scale itself, and the ranking cannot be moved with it.
Score = (n / (n + m)) × R + (m / (n + m)) × C. Here R is the school's own mean rating, n the number of its verified reviews, C the mean rating across the other schools, and m the weight of that mean expressed in reviews; our m is ten. This is standard Bayesian smoothing, the same as the large aggregators use. The mean across the other schools is calculated from the data rather than set by hand: otherwise it would be a hidden dial for moving the ranking.
Steps by what the school has disclosed: the share of leavers who went on to university is published and backed by examination results or a named list of universities - 90; examination results are published, or the share of leavers on its own - 80; only a list of universities - 70; nothing is published - 55. The share of leavers is published by 56 schools, a list of universities by 209, examination results by 286. A list of universities sits below the middle deliberately: the school chooses which names to show and does not say how many leavers actually got there - twelve famous names may stand for twelve students out of two hundred. Silence has a price too, named in advance: otherwise a school that disclosed something would lose points against one that disclosed nothing.
Why a round percentage on its own does not earn the top step. There is no way to verify a share of leavers, while examination results and a named list of universities can be verified, so the top step requires the percentage to be backed by something. Otherwise a number on a school's home page would beat a school that published real examination results.
Some schools do not admit everyone: by entrance examination, by school results, citizens only, boys only or girls only. We neither lower nor raise the score for this, and here is why. There is only one way to separate the quality of the teaching from the quality of the intake - comparing the results of the same cohort on entry and on leaving. No school publishes such data, which means any selectivity coefficient would be invented by us rather than measured. There are no invented dials in this ranking.
Instead we show the admissions conditions on the school's profile itself, in the words of the school or of the state, with a link to the source. The reader sees whom the school admits and how, and decides for themselves whether it suits their child. Where neither the school nor the state says anything about admissions, we write nothing: a school's silence does not mean there are no restrictions.
Steps by disclosure, as with destinations: the school publishes a named list of teachers with qualifications beside the names - 90; a named list without qualifications - 85; only the number of teachers - 70; nothing at all - 55. The criterion was first meant to work differently - the student-teacher ratio, the share of teachers with a professional qualification and staff turnover - but across eleven countries it turned out that no school publishes the share or the turnover, and only about one school in eight publishes the ratio. A criterion that can be calculated for nobody measures nothing, so it was rewritten around what schools do disclose.
An important qualification: a school for which this criterion does not exist yet shows "no data", not 55. A school's silence and an absence of data are different things, and passing the second off as the first would be unfair to the school.
Why the named list is counted rather than the ratio. The student-teacher ratio says less about a classroom than it seems: at a school of two thousand the denominator holds the speech therapist, the music and PE teachers and the librarian, while classes still have twenty-two children in them. A named list answers the question a family asks first - can we find out who will teach our child - and a year later the same list shows staff turnover. The ratio and the class size we show on the profile as facts and leave the conclusion to the parent, rather than hiding a debatable figure inside the score. A list of the leadership does not count as a list of teachers: a page with the head and the deputies does not answer that question.
55 points to start with, plus 5 for each confirmed item out of eight: swimming pool, laboratories, sports hall, theatre or assembly hall, library, catering, school transport, boarding. Plus 5 for a campus that is described. The ceiling is 95. Only what the school's website states plainly is counted: "a modern campus" is not a swimming pool. Everything else a school names about its premises we record as well and show on the profile under "Also on site", but it does not enter the score. There is data for 1040 of 1296 schools.
We count on two scales and take whichever gives more. A named list: 58 plus 3 for each club named, ceiling 78. A number without names: 55 plus 0.5 per club, ceiling 70. The ceilings differ deliberately. A list the reader can check by opening the school's website, whereas "more than 30 clubs" cannot be checked, so a bare number does not reach the ceiling of the schools that disclose. There is data for 740 of 1296 schools.
55 points to start with, plus 5 for each confirmed item out of eight: CCTV, security staff, access control, a nurse or medical room, a counsellor, a child protection policy, staff training, an anti-bullying policy. Plus 5 where the school covers both sides at once, physical safety and support for the pupil: cameras and a school counsellor answer different risks, and completeness matters here more than a number of similar items. The ceiling is 95. Only what the school has stated plainly about itself on its own website is counted. There is data for 609 of 1296 schools.
The school's rank by cost within its own country: schools are lined up from the most affordable to the most expensive, and the points are spread in even steps from 90 down to 50. It is the rank that counts, not the gap in money: otherwise a single school priced three times above the rest would press all the others against the top of the scale. A free state school stands outside this line and earns 95 - and it stands outside it entirely, taking no place in the line and shifting no fee-paying school's points. Otherwise the cheapest fee-paying school in a country would lose a point for affordability because of a school that charges nothing at all and usually admits by competition. The comparison is within a country, because otherwise schools in cheap countries would gain an advantage from the price level rather than from sensible value. Fees are published for 459 of 1296 schools.
Some schools publish a monthly fee rather than an annual one: 31 of 459. They can be compared with the rest only over the same period, so we work the year out ourselves. Where a school says how many payments it takes for the school year, we use its number; where it does not, we count ten, and the country page says so on a line of its own. Ten is how many payments the schools that do state a number take, and it is how long the school year lasts in most countries in the ranking. The monthly fee does not go anywhere: it stands on the school's profile in the same figures as on its website.
Exams and destinations, safety and wellbeing, teaching staff, facilities, clubs and activitiesare calculated from a single source, the school's official website. Only what the school has stated plainly about itself is counted: "a modern campus" is not a swimming pool, "a safe environment" is not cameras. Which means such a score measures the disclosure of data as much as it measures quality itself. A school with good security and a sparse website will score low on safety.
We do not treat this as a flaw to be hidden. Openness is in itself the mark of a school a parent will find easier to deal with: if a school does not say whether it has a counsellor and a medical room, there is nowhere to find that out before applying. But passing a disclosure score off as a safety score would be dishonest, so on a school's profile these criteria carry the note "scored on disclosed data", and under the bars there is an explanation of what a low score means. A school can add to its profile and attach links, and the score is recalculated.
Two different things have to be told apart here: the school has said nothing about itself and we have not read its website yet. They are counted differently, and that matters: otherwise silence would pay better than disclosure. Where a school's website has been read and holds nothing, the score is 55 - for facilities, clubs, safety, destinations and teaching staff. The price of silence is named in advance and is the same for everyone: from there each item disclosed adds points. The median stands in only for what we have not checked. Those are the schools whose data on a particular criterion we have not read yet: the website would not open, some sections are unavailable, the school is new to the ranking and has not been read in full. Today there are 148 such schools. Such a score is marked on the profile with the words "scored at the median". Where the number of schools is even, the higher of the two middle values is taken: a substituted score always equals the score of a real school rather than a number no school has. Fees stand apart and are replaced by the median for the country. They measure not disclosure but a magnitude, the school's place in the line of prices. A school with no published fees cannot be put in that line: sending it to the bottom would assert that it is expensive, and that we do not know. Criteria with no data for any school - reviews - do not enter the score at all.
A review can be left from the age of 16, and no account is needed for it: a voice is verified not by registration but by moderation before publication - every review is read by a person first. The criterion switches on for a school once five approved reviews have come in; until then we show "no reviews" rather than a score of zero.
We do not use ratings or reviews from Google Maps, Yandex Maps or 2GIS: their terms forbid aggregation and the building of a competing directory. Our own verified reviews are the only lawful route.
If you see something inaccurate - whether you represent the school or simply know it - write to us with a link to an official document or a page of the website. What we check is not the author of the letter but the source they point to. We will correct the data and show the date of the update. A school can claim its profile and fill in the missing sections: that does not affect the score, but it raises the completeness of the data, and with it the trust of parents.