Farabi International School - Шымкент

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 appears in the organisation's directory, but the organisation has granted it no status at all. At the Council of International Schools such an entry is called a Prospect and means a potential client in their system: the school may have made an enquiry, may have been added from outside, or may not know about the entry at all - on the websites of three such schools out of five the organisation is not mentioned once. An entry like this brings a school into the ranking but scores the minimum on that criterion, exactly as membership and candidacy do. It is neither an accreditation nor candidacy, and it says nothing about the quality of the school. The entry stands in the organisation's open directory, and no status stands behind it there.

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.

A Kazakh group working under the brand FARABI International School: the name of the group itself stands on the site only in the email address. Two schools, in Atyrau and Shymkent, with a contact office in Astana. The schools are private and fee-paying; admission is by interview for the youngest and by entrance testing from the second grade. The year of foundation is not named on the site.

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.