Anne Hill International School

It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.

What the badge means for this school. The school belongs to this organisation but has not been through its accreditation. The difference matters: membership is usually paid for and has no external inspection behind it. The entry is confirmed in the organisation's open directory.

Part of the University of Cambridge. It allows a school to teach the Cambridge programmes and to enter pupils for the exams. There are four stages and they are authorised separately: primary, lower secondary, IGCSE and A Level. If the stages are known they are named in the line below; if that line is missing, the school does not publish them, and the Cambridge registry does not show stages either - it gives only the name of the centre, the country and whether private candidates are accepted. Cambridge calls what it does registration rather than accreditation, and the network holds about ten thousand schools.

What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. At this school: Primary (ages 5-11), Lower Secondary (ages 11-14), IGCSE (ages 14-16), A-Level (ages 16-18). Primary is the primary stage, ages 5 to 11: English, mathematics and science to Cambridge syllabuses. At the end of the stage a school may run the optional Checkpoint test, which is marked in Cambridge. Lower Secondary is the middle stage, ages 11 to 14, with the same optional Checkpoint test at the end. IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate. A-Level is the senior years, and their results are what British and many other universities admit on.

International Primary Curriculum: a British primary school programme for children aged 5 to 11. It teaches through themes that draw subjects together rather than through separate subjects; it is published by the International Curriculum Association, formerly Fieldwork Education.

What this means for this school. This is a programme for the primary stage, not an accreditation of the school: the organisation sells it to schools and trains their teachers, but it does not check the quality of teaching at a particular school and keeps no public register of the schools working to it. There is no outside register to check it against, so the entry comes from the school's own words or from the record of its accrediting organisation. The programme has no leaving certificate: at the end of primary school a child moves on to the middle stage, and it is that stage which decides what they finish with.

The pedagogy of Maria Montessori: a child chooses the activity, works at their own pace with special materials, and mixed-age groups are arranged so that older children teach the younger ones. It is used most often in the nursery and primary stages.

What this means for this school. The name Montessori belongs to nobody: any school may call itself a Montessori school, and there is no single body that checks this. There are associations that train teachers and recognise schools, but membership of them is voluntary, and our entry means exactly that the school describes itself this way. This pedagogy has no leaving certificate, so what to look at is what the school finishes with.