Britannica International School, Budapest

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), A-Level (ages 16-18). IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate. A-Level is the senior years, and their results are what British and many other universities admit on.

It gives a school approved centre status: that means Pearson exams can be sat in the school itself. What is checked is the premises, the equipment, the secure storage of papers and the presence of trained invigilators.

What the badge means for this school. The school can run Pearson exams on its own premises. The status says nothing about teaching, about results or about the school itself: any school able to run an exam securely holds it. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Which Pearson qualifications this school is approved for is not stated here.

An association of British schools abroad with a quality inspection of its own. It has nine membership categories, and the word "accredited" appears in seven of them, although COBIS does its own inspection in one: in the rest it recognises an accreditation granted by somebody 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.

An international education group that describes itself as a growing global education group with a portfolio of schools, headquartered in London. Its own figures give eight countries and fifteen schools; we count fourteen, because the two Baleares International College entries, Sa Porrassa and Sant Agusti, are two campuses of one school - shared domain, shared name, shared accreditation and page paths under /campus/ - although the group itself lists them as two schools. All eight countries: Albania, China, Ecuador, Hungary, Mexico, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain - 128 nationalities and more than 6,800 students; on individual school pages the same group describes its reach more broadly, as Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, and both descriptions are given here as the group gives them. The group applies its own Value Creation Plan to each school while leaving the school, in its own words, full autonomy over teaching and culture. Until 2024 the group was called Orbital Education Group, and the former name still appears on the schools' own pages and in BSO inspection reports. What the group's site nowhere states: whether it owns the schools or manages them - the words portfolio, investment and school partnerships do not settle that distinction, and that silence is recorded here rather than filled in.

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.