International Community School Udon Thani
Udon Thani, Thailand · est. 2020 · PrivateKey facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
ACSI · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeInternational Community School Foundation · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
An accreditation of Christian schools: the school spends eighteen months to two years on a self-study, and then peers from other Christian schools visit. Faithfulness to the Christian confession is part of the standards, so this is an accreditation with a condition of belief. It often runs jointly with MSA or Cognia, and such a pair is stronger than ACSI alone.
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 organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
ICS Non-Profit Educational Foundation, the foundation of two international Christian schools in Thailand. The head school, International Community School Bangkok, grew out of a small home-schooling cooperative and in 1992 joined the Network of Christian Schools (NICS), then separated from the network in favour of being run by a local board, keeping the same commitment to quality Christian education. Since 1998 the school has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). In 2003 ICS Bangkok moved to the Bang Na district, and today some 1,100 people study there and more than 30 nationalities are represented. In 2015 the board of the foundation decided to answer the need for quality international Christian education in the north-east of Thailand and in 2020 opened a second campus in Udon Thani. The site of the head school is ics.ac.th.
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.