Izmir, Turkey · PrivateThe first school in Izmir recognised as an international school by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. Teaching is in English: the Cambridge curriculum from primary, Cambridge Checkpoint in Grade 8, then IGCSE and the IB Diploma Programme in the senior years. The school is one of the two international schools of MEF Okulları, the other one standing in Istanbul. The Gaziemir campus covers 7,000 square metres in three blocks.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · Primary, Lower Secondary, IGCSE · authorised programmeCIS · accreditationNEASC · accreditationMEF Okulları · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
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: Primary (ages 5-11), Lower Secondary (ages 11-14), IGCSE (ages 14-16). Primary is the primary stage, ages 5 to 11: English, mathematics and science to Cambridge syllabuses. At the end of the stage a school may run the optional Checkpoint test, which is marked in Cambridge. 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 →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 →The International Baccalaureate: programmes of a Swiss organisation, among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Each stage is authorised separately, so a school may hold one of them, two, or all four. 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.
What this means for this school. Authorisation for each stage is granted by the organisation itself after an on-site visit, and a school has to go through it again every few years. Every authorised school in the world stands in the open register at ibo.org, where the status can be checked independently. The IB diploma is awarded by the organisation rather than by the school, and the papers are marked by external examiners, so a leaver's grade does not depend on how strict their own school is with them.
Schools of the company MEF Okulları A.Ş., which on its own pages is called an enterprise of Arıkanlı Holding; the founder is İbrahim Arıkan, and the network writes that from 1988 he studied the school systems of the United States, Japan, Germany, Russia and England on the spot, and set up his own model in 1996. The Ulus campus in Istanbul holds five schools - a kindergarten, a primary, a middle, a high school and a Fen ve Teknoloji Lisesi, - and separately the network names two schools of the international line, MEF International Schools in Istanbul and in Izmir. Alongside the schools the holding has MEF University. The network publishes no combined number of schools or campuses.
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.