Bilkent Laboratory and International School
Ankara, Turkey · PrivateA private school on the grounds of Bilkent University, in the East Campus on the south-western edge of Ankara. The school calls itself part of the Bilkent family and enrols Turkish and international students alike. Turkish and English are used together in lessons: English is intensive in the early years, bilingual after that, and the school leads to two external qualifications at the end - IGCSE and the IB Diploma. Its own counter on the home page gives 1,115 students, 185 teaching staff and 98 teaching rooms. The school day runs Monday to Friday, eight in the morning to four in the afternoon.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · PYP, MYP, DP · authorised programmeCIS · accreditationNEASC · accreditationCambridge · Lower Secondary, IGCSE · authorised programmeBilkent · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
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: PYP (ages 3-12), MYP (ages 11-16), DP (ages 16-19). PYP is the primary stage, ages 3 to 12. It is not a set of subjects but a frame for the whole school: learning is built around lines of inquiry, and there are no exams at the end. MYP is the middle stage, ages 11 to 16. There are no exams here either; at the end an optional electronic assessment of pupils' work is possible. DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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 has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →An American accreditation working since 1885. For international schools it uses an approach where the visitors look first at live lessons rather than at folders of paperwork: the team works in the school for about a week. It is the only one here whose public directory honestly separates accredited schools from candidates.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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: Lower Secondary (ages 11-14), IGCSE (ages 14-16). 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.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →The state school programme of the country the school stands in: it is set by that country's ministry of education, which also licenses the school and awards the leaving certificate. That certificate is used for entry to local universities, and abroad it is matched to the local one.
What this means for this school. This entry does not count towards the score, and that is deliberate. Every lawful school in a country works to the national programme, so on its own it tells one school apart from no other - unlike the French, German or Russian programmes, which are carried abroad and confirmed by the register of their organisation. We show it because a parent needs to know what programme their child is taught and what certificate the child will get. Counting it would lift the whole ranking at once and still tell nobody apart.
Schools held by İhsan Doğramacı Vakfı, the foundation of İhsan Doğramacı: Bilkent University calls the foundation their owner, and the name of the foundation stands in the official names of the schools as the abbreviation İDV. There are five institutions. On the university campuses in Ankara there are İDV Özel Bilkent Okulları, the full cycle taught on the national curriculum in Turkish and English, and İDV Özel Bilkent Lisesi; there too is Bilkent Laboratuvar ve Uluslararası Okulu (BLIS), a school teaching in English and with the programmes of the International Baccalaureate. Besides Ankara the foundation holds the Bilkent laboratory schools in Erzurum and Malatya and a music preparatory school. The foundation counts its primary school from 1 July 1994, and lessons in it began in September of the same year.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.