Colégio Marista Santa Maria

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. Which stages - from the early years programme for three-year-olds up to A-Level - this school is approved for is not stated here.

The schools of the Instituto Marista, the Catholic congregation of the Marist Brothers founded by Marcellin Champagnat in 1817 at La Valla in France. In Brazil the congregation is divided into three provinces, and it is they that own the schools: Brasil Centro-Sul (PMBCS, formed in 2002 by the merger of the provinces of Santa Catarina and São Paulo, seated in Curitiba, working in Paraná, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, the Federal District and Goiânia), Brasil Centro-Norte (PMBCN, Brasília, thirteen states of the north, north-east and south-east) and Brasil Sul-Amazônia (PMBSA, Porto Alegre, 19 colleges, 8 free schools and 8 social centres). The name Rede Marista belongs to the last of the three; the name common to all three is Marista Brasil. Above the provinces stands the União Marista do Brasil (UMBRASIL), a non-profit legal entity of private law created in 2005 in Brasília: it represents and unites the provinces, and it names the provinces themselves as the maintainers of the schools. The numbers diverge: the common portal speaks of 97 units of basic education, fee-paying and free together, and lists 86 with addresses - in 22 states and the Federal District, 60 of them marked as a Colégio Marista, 19 as a social school and 7 as a social unit. The Marist websites name neither a franchise nor partner schools.

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.