Istanbul, Turkey · PrivateA Turkish private school of the MEF group on the Ulus campus in Besiktas, Istanbul: a kindergarten, a primary school, a middle school, a high school and a science and technology high school. The core programme is the Turkish national curriculum set by the Ministry of National Education, and the high school also runs the IB Diploma Programme. The group's international school stands on the same campus and its own page states that the nine-acre site is shared with MEF National Schools. The MEF group runs two internationally oriented schools.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · DP · authorised programmeCambridge · authorised programmeMEF Okulları · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
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: DP (ages 16-19). 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.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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.
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.