St. James' School & St. George's School
Cascais, Portugal · est. 1960 · PrivateTwo schools at one address in Cascais, carrying a child from the age of 6 to the end of the upper years. The older one, St. George's School, opened in 1960; the primary one, St. James' School, was opened as its extension and inaugurated on 4 December 2007 under the same guidelines, policies and ethos. Teaching is bilingual and the school says so plainly: teaching time is divided equally between the two languages and the two curricula. At St. George's, English and mathematics, the sciences, Global Perspectives, economics and business studies in Years 10-11 follow the Cambridge curriculum, while history in Years 8-9, computing, art and physical education follow the Portuguese national curriculum; British history in Years 6-7 follows the English national curriculum, and French follows both the national and the Cambridge curriculum. Portuguese language and literature is a core subject alongside English. The schools' pages are written in both English and Portuguese, so the language of lessons is English and Portuguese together.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · IGCSE · authorised programmeWhat 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: IGCSE (ages 14-16). 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 →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.