International schools are growing in number and diversity. While this growth has received attention under several dimensions, from cultural, social, and institutional aspects, one aspect that seems less explored is the one related to the recognition of qualifications. This despite the fact that qualifications awarded by international schools are presented and perceived as a gateway for admission to most prestigious universities on a global scale. This chapter explores what the elements are that make an international final school leaving qualification recognizable in order to access higher education according to the European framework of policies and practices in recognition of international qualifications, presenting the landscape of international schools in Italy as a national case study, and elaborates a categorization of international schools from the point of view of the qualifications giving access to higher education that they offer, starting from the international definitions of transnational and international schools.
TopBackground
What is an international school? When was the concept of international schools born, and how is it evolving?
Literature offers several reconstructions of the historical evolution of classification and elaboration of international schools (Bunnell, 2014; Hill, 2015; King, 1988).
The present chapter refers to the three types of international schools: Type A Traditional, Type B Ideological, and Type C Non-traditional (Hayden & Thompson, 2013), as further elaborated (Bunnell et al., 2016). According to Bunnell, international schools under Type A have been traditionally established to offer education to the children of globally mobile parents, mainly expatriates. In such schools, English is the primary language of communication, and the funding mechanism is usually privately-based, not on a for-profit basis (Bunnell et al., 2016). Type B Ideological International Schools (Hayden & Thompson, 2013) are based on the principles of international open-mindedness and education for global peace and understanding (Bunnell et al., 2016). The schools falling under this typology, such as the United World Colleges, offer international curricula, such as the International Baccalaureate (Bunnell et al., 2016), which is widely offered in other typologies of schools. These two typologies of schools, made by “Type A Traditional form pragmatically serving the global market and the Type B Ideological form serving global peace and internationalism, are being reconfigured by the rapid growth of a new kind of International School categorised as Type C Non-traditional” (Bunnell et al., 2016; Hayden & Thompson, 2013). Type C schools are usually for profit, characterized by different configurations, and they enrol local students coming from middle-class and wealthy backgrounds (Bunnell et al., 2016). The development of different typologies of international schools has diluted the “classical” notion of international school, with the concept of an international school becoming complex and confusing (Hill, 2015). In particular, Type-C non-traditional international schools could encompass a large number of variants, such as state schools with international sections, corporate ownership, or branches of elite Anglo-American schools (Poole, 2020). A more recent definition to describe these institutions is “Globalised English Medium of Instruction Schools,” which encompasses several sub-groups of schools “with a global outlook located mainly outside an English-speaking country, delivering a non-national curriculum at least partly in English” (Bunnell, 2019). The emergent issues in this continuous changing scene continue to be object of research (Bunnell, 2022).