IGC Thai Binh Duong (IPS)

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: IGCSE (ages 14-16). IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate.

Tập đoàn Giáo dục IGC is the operator of its own network of institutions from kindergarten to college, with its head office in Ho Chi Minh City. Ownership, management and franchise are not separated, the owner of the group is not named and nothing is said about franchising. The numbers differ and we give both: the introductory text speaks of more than 28 years of work and 26 institutions, while the summary of figures on the same page gives 28 institutions - 12 kindergartens, 13 general schools, a college and two academies; elsewhere in the same section 27 years is given. The count of schools differs as well: the Vietnamese page names 8 all-through schools in Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai, Ben Tre and Tay Ninh and more than 12,000 pupils, the English page 9 schools in Dong Nai, Ho Chi Minh City, Lam Dong, Tay Ninh and Ben Tre. The chronology begins on 1 April 1998 with the Le Quy Don school in Tan Mai, the first private school in Dong Nai province, and goes on with the Sonadezi college (2005), Trinh Hoai Duc (2006), Ban Mai (2007), Thai Binh Duong (2010), Le Quy Don Quyet Thang (2014), IGC Tay Ninh (2019) and IGC Ben Tre (2021). There are two lines of study: enhanced quality and bilingual; the ministry's programme serves as the base, with English to CEFR, Cambridge programmes, the IC3 and MOS certificates, STEAM and Leader in Me added to it.

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.