Internationally-national schools: A critical review of this developing sector and the frameworks that define international schools

Abstract

Across the world, the international school sector is changing at a rapid pace, having an impact on all facets of international schools, from curriculum to clientele. This article describes an emerging concept from this sector that I have termed the internationally-national school, borne from the nationally affiliated schools that currently exist within the sector that have adapted and evolved. It seeks to contribute to the discourse on international schools and the typologies used to categorise them. In order to embed this concept as a subsection of international schools, this article critically analyses three established frameworks currently in use to classify international schools and positions the internationally-national school within each framework. From this analysis, I conclude that internationally-national schools should be a recognised part of the international school landscape and that there is a need for an update to some of these frameworks as they lack the flexibility required to keep pace with the everchanging sector.

Keywords

international schools international education international school curriculum international school frameworks internationally-national

Introduction

Once a ‘well-kept secret’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2013: 4), it has been predicted that by 2025 international schools will ‘have an education footprint larger than England’s state and private schools combined’ (Hallgarten et al., 2015: 7). Though steeped in history, the field of international schools is developing and changing at a rapid pace which is having an impact on all facets of their existence: their numbers, their clientele, their educational offerings and their ethos. No longer the exclusive home of globally mobile expatriates, international schools are increasingly populated with affluent local families seeking a competitive-edge for their children (Bunnell et al., 2016).

In order to remain relevant and useful to its audience, research into international schools needs to keep up with the rapid rate of change. With this in mind, this article aims to shed light on one emerging concept within the international school landscape that I have described as the internationally-national school, a school that falls within the definition of an international school, as defined later in this article, but aligns itself to one or more nationalities, either in name, curriculum or some other aspect. Firstly, I will review current definitions of international schools, as well as explore the growing trend of nationally affiliated schools as highlighted by Bunnell (2019), distinguishing the internationally-national schools from other international schools. In order to position this emerging concept within current thinking, as well as demonstrate the changing landscape surrounding international schools, I will critically analyse three existing frameworks used to classify and categorise international schools, then attempt to place the internationally-national school within each framework.

International schools in literature

International schools and international education are ‘not necessarily one and the same’ (Hill, 2016: 9). Bray (2015: 122) states that ‘the term “international education” has multiple meanings in a range of contexts’. In their seminal work entitled Research in International Education, Dolby and Rahman ‘identify, describe, and critically analyse six distinct research approaches in international education’ (2008: 677); these six areas are comparative and international education, internationalisation of higher education, international schools, international research on teacher and teacher education, internationalisation of K-12 education and globalisation and education. Resnik (2012: 292) supports the multiplicity of meanings, or research approaches, stating that ‘[i]nternational education points to a new research area and new research objects that include a large array of institutions and agents such as international schools, international curriculum and international students’. These definitions lead to an understanding that international schools sit ‘best described as a sub-area’ (Bunnell, 2019: 1) under the umbrella of international education. This article will continue to use the term international education as a superordinate which incorporates, among other aspects, international schools.

In order to define and understand the internationally-national concept within the ‘already complicated landscape’ of international schools (Bunnell et al., 2017: 303), it is important to first define the term ‘international school’. The term is one that is used frequently to describe schools of all types in countries around the world that ‘may or may not share an underlying educational philosophy’ (Hayden and Thompson, 1995: 332), a reference that is over 25 years old, nevertheless the sentiment holds true today; in 2019, Meyer (2019: 9) stated that the term ‘holds varying meanings’. For example, the term may be used to reference curriculum, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB), or location, such as a British school located in a host country. The concept of international schools, or schooling, is ‘relatively ill-defined’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2016: 9), and ‘can be interpreted in a variety of ways’ (Meyer, 2019: 9). With no single body to regulate the use of the term ‘international school’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2016: 11), it has become a self-appointed title for many schools around the world. With a history tracing back to the period following the First World War (Hayden, 2011: 214) and originally founded ‘largely as a means of catering for the children of expatriate diplomats and employees of transnational organisations who followed their parents’ globally mobile professions around the world’ (Hayden, 2011: 214), international schools have grown in numbers since that time and have evolved in ethos, philosophy, curriculum and clientele. International schools are no longer on the fringe of the education field and are regarded with increasing prominence (Dvir et al., 2018).

Though no concrete definition exists, researchers have, for many years, attempted to pinpoint criteria by which schools can be characterised as international or not (see inter alia Leach, 1969; Terwilliger, 1972). Richards (2012: 175) proposed four characteristics of international schools:

1. English is the medium of instruction;

2. Standards are aligned with American or European schools;

3. Qualifications achieved are internationally accepted;

4. The school is derived from a ‘western’ educational tradition.

These characteristics, Richards points out, are not necessarily ‘based on school philosophies’ but on the expectations of the community (2012: 175). Most interesting here is that international is equated to ‘westernness’, and more specifically, American or European. This disregards any other western educational systems, such as Canadian or Australian, as well as non-western traditions; as Tanu (2016: 431) suggests, this is not an uncommon assertion, given that ‘the dominant “Western” culture of the school [is] often conflated with being “international”’.

ISC Research is a commercial body of researchers providing ‘English-medium K-12 international school data, trends and intelligence’ (ISC Research, 18/4/2022); they identify an international school as a school that:

delivers a curriculum to any combination of pre-school, primary or secondary students, wholly or partly in English outside an English-speaking country.

or;

If a school is in a country where English is one of the official languages, it offers an English-medium curriculum other than the country’s national curriculum and the school is international in its orientation. (ISC Research, 24/1/2022)

This is not strictly a definition and is not one derived from academic research, but it has been referred to as a definition in academic writing (see Keller, 2015; Bunnell, 2019), and many researchers have used data from ISC in their research and writing, lending credibility to their identifying criteria.

Though the ISC statement has somewhat evolved since they referred to it in their 2016 paper on institutional legitimacy, Bunnell et al. (2016: 4) asserted that the first criterion in the above identification, that a school delivers an English medium curriculum outside of an English-speaking country, was ‘not sufficient to underpin a legitimate claim to be an International School’. Bunnell does, however, state that it is a ‘core-defining mission’ that schools deliver a ‘non-national curriculum in English outside an English-speaking country’ (2019: 2). The binary choices offered by the ISC criterion, in practice, include and exclude a number of what would seem on the surface to be similar schools; for example, a public bilingual school in Spain, which teaches in both Spanish and English (British Council, 24/1/2022), would be deemed international (these schools make no claim to being international), conversely a public bilingual school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which also teaches in both Spanish and English (Albuquerque Public Schools, 24/1/2022) would not be classified as international. Equally, schools that are part of the government funded German schools abroad, which claim to be international schools (Sander and Admiraal, 2016) do not fit within the ISC criterion. Whether a school defines itself as international or not, there is little research or argument to suggest why, in many attempts to define them, an international school must be English medium and not other languages.

In continuing their work on institutional legitimacy and a school’s claim to be legitimately international, Bunnell et al. (2017: 312) ‘concluded that the provision of an international curriculum is an International School’s institutional primary task, which…is central to an institution’s legitimacy’. Whilst their analysis of this centres on the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP), they do recognise that there are other forms of an ‘international curriculum’ and acknowledge that ‘the international nature of a curriculum and how it might be validly construed as such is a matter for further analysis’ (2017: 314).

More in line with the second part of the ISC criterion, in his 2019 book Bunnell defined international schools as ‘schools with a global outlook located mainly outside an English-speaking country delivering a non-national curriculum at least partly in English’ (2019: 1). The ‘global outlook’ Bunnell refers to is similar to ISC’s ‘international in its orientation’. ISC provides no concrete information as to what ‘international in orientation’ means, and whilst Bunnell does clarify that ‘global in outlook’ is ‘offering an approach to education that is “globalized”’ (2019: 2), as opposed to simply global in location, or merely ‘positioned around the world’ (2019: 2), there is nothing to suggest what globalised may look like in a school context.

Whilst the recognition that an international school should be defined on more than the language in which the students learn or the location of the school could be seen as an evolution of the characterisation of international schools, it can also be seen as a circling back to some early examples of international schooling. Spring Grove School, in London, is considered by some to be the first international school, in which founders aimed to foster ‘international harmony by creation of a new type of education which would enable citizens to become international ambassadors’ (Sylvester, 2003: 5). Schools since then have not necessarily been borne of the same philosophy or ethos; another school of thought is that the first international school was the International School of Geneva, founded in 1924, created for the children of employees of the League of Nations, its international label given based on ‘a student population drawn from nations throughout the world’ (Dolby and Rahman, 2008: 689). These two types of schools form part of many attempts to differentiate international schools ‘based on a dichotomy between those that are market-driven...and ideology-driven’ (Tanu, 2016: 432); it is noted, however, that these two ‘need not be in contrast and to a large extent they coexist alongside each other’ (Haywood, 2003: 147), though as the international schools market has grown, ‘it is arguably the pragmatic dimension that has become increasingly high profile’ (Hayden, 2011: 221).

With still no firm and universally accepted definition of international schools, there is the question of necessity; do we need to define international schools? Hill (2016) does not feel that it is a ‘fruitful’ exercise to continue to search for a ‘definition or term which will encapsulate the array of institutions currently regarded as international schools’, nor that would be inclusive of any further permutations of such schools (Hill, 2016: 11). Whilst this seems to be a call to stop looking for a definition, Knight (2015: 2) believes that any definition that is found is not required to be a common definition but that any meaning is ‘appropriate for a broad range of contexts and countries of the world’. Though Knight’s work is located in the context of higher education, she makes clear that the ‘critical point is that the international dimension relates to all aspects of education and the role it plays in society’ (Knight, 2015: 2 my italics), extending its relevance beyond postsecondary education and into the domain of international schools.

Bunnell (2019: 2) took Knight’s views when creating his definition mentioned previously, describing his own definition as deliberately ‘vague and overly-inclusive’. Meyer (2019: 2) describes the advantage of schools creating their own definition, as they weigh ‘in on the extent to which they intend to interpret the label “international school” literally or symbolically with respect to their individual ideological direction’ whilst also taking into account their own context. Bittencourt and Willetts (2018: 516) suggest that the process of schools creating their own ‘purpose and value’ regarding international schooling is not ‘entirely unhinged’. As of July 2021, ISC reports there were 12,373 international schools in the world, with 5.68 million students and 550,846 staff (ISC Research, 25/1/2022); the ‘institutional heterogeneity’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2018: 3) is vast and attempting to create one definition could, one could argue, risk homogenising the sector to the detriment of those within it.

Whilst there may not be one definition, there is one constant in international schools, which is that ‘they offer an alternative to local, national approaches to education’ (Heyward, 2002: 22). For the purposes of this article, international schools will be any school that offers something different to the local, national system in the country in which it is located; the curriculum being delivered is ‘non-local’ (Bunnell, 2019: 2). They may or may not refer to themselves as international schools in their title, but they fall under the umbrella of international school by their location and curriculum.

Internationally-national schools

With the aforementioned institutional heterogeneity, as well as the wide net the definition used in this article casts when classifying international schools, a variety of schools fall under the international school umbrella, including the internationally-national school. The following section seeks to explore the diverse nature of international schools and how the internationally-national school concept is emerging from the present-day context.

In 2019, Bunnell reported that ISC’s figures show 9215 international schools across their four research regions (Asia, Europe, Americas and Africa). Table 1 reflects these schools organised by the different main curriculums offered:

Table 1.

Number of schools delivering each curriculum (Bunnell, 2019: 22).

The curricula represented here are United Kingdom based, United States based, IBDP and its related programmes, the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and Middle Years Programme (MYP) and finally the Cambridge International Primary curriculum. Some points to note are as follows:

• The number of international schools represented here are from 2019 and are less than the 2021 numbers discussed earlier in this article. I have made the assumption that as the number of schools have increased, each bar in this graph will increase proportionally.

• UK-based means, in almost all cases, English National Curriculum (previous research for my MA dissertation revealed only one school in Japan that follow Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, none that offer the Welsh or Northern Irish curriculums) (Pearce, 2016).

• US-based is not based on a national curriculum, as education falls under state jurisdiction in the United States (Mahfouz et al., 2019), so the term usually refers to a school aligning themselves with one state’s standards; Wu and Koh remark that, in the case of US-based schools in China, ‘what qualifies them as “American” remains ambiguous’ (2022: 7).

• The number of schools represented on the graph does not equate to the 9215 as indicated by ISC. This is likely attributed to those schools that do not deliver any of these curriculums, such as those that are Canadian or Australian.

• Some schools may offer more than one curriculum, running concurrently or consecutively (e.g. offer all PYP, MYP and IBDP consecutively, offer UK-based IGCSE and then transition to IBDP, or A-level and IBDP as optional pathways).

Though curriculum is not the only distinguishing factor in the typology of schools, it is interesting to note that these statistics demonstrate that a recognised international curriculum is not offered in the majority of international schools. According to the Council of British International Schools, in 2018 45% of the international schools market was made up of British international schools (2018: 1); these schools are examples of schools that offer ‘a variation of the curriculum offered back home’ (Bagnall, 2015: 63), and many offer both a British-based curriculum along with a recognised international curriculum such as the IB. The Australian government reports that other representation in the market comes from the US (as shown in Table 1), as well as Canada (with approximately 150 schools) and Australia (89 schools) (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2019).

Along with this, there are schools that Bagnall refers to as ‘national schools established overseas’ (2015: 62) and Bunnell describes as ‘Extra-National Schooling’ (2019: 15); these are ‘an extension of the national-system, beyond national boundaries’ (Bunnell, 2019: 62). Schools from France, Germany and Japan are, in part, funded from taxpayers in their home countries, staffed by citizens of the country and offer the national curriculum of the country, yet as a school that provides something different to the local education system they could be considered international schools, as they are by Bagnall (2015). Bunnell (2019: 16) also identifies a number of schools that could fall into this category, though are ‘rarely discussed in literature’ which he sees as a ‘major academic omission’; these are schools serving the Indian, Chinese, Russian, Pakistani and Filipino communities overseas (such as The Philippine School, Dubai, and the Chinese School, Dubai).

Schools of this type are not new. In 1995, Hayden and Thompson referred to schools that ‘are essentially national schools catering for children away from their home country’ (1995: 21) and Sylvester considered a ‘significant segment of international schools as transplanted national schools’ (1998: 186). Whilst the Yokohama International School and International School of Geneva were founded in 1924, and are considered to be two of the first international schools (Hayden, 2011: 214), the former was established for ‘foreign students’ (Yokohama International School, no date) and the latter ‘to provide an international education based on the progressive educational principles of the éducation nouvelle movement’ (Ecolint, no date), a nationally affiliated school was founded around the same time; Tanglin Trust School, in Singapore, was established in 1925 ‘to provide high quality British education to children of expatriate families’ (Tanglin Trust School, 2022). The first post-war Japanese school opened in Thailand in 1956.

Whilst the national affiliation is not a recent phenomenon, the demographics some of these schools serve have changed dramatically and with that the strict adherence to their national curriculum has morphed into a more international version. Many of these schools that were once exclusive to expatriates are now filled with local children, with estimates that at least 80% of international schools students are from the host country (Bunnell, 2021a: 4), though it should be noted that not all countries allow citizens to attend international schools. The change in clientele, who are largely ‘local aspiring middle class families’, has led to an evolution in how nationally affiliated schools present their curriculum model and though ‘the extent to which such models are contextually re-modelled differently’ in each host country (Wu and Koh, 2022: 2 original italics) is not known; there is certainly evidence to suggest that internationalising the national is present in many of these schools. To illustrate this point, Table 2 contains extracts from various school websites from self-identified (either in name or as part of their description on their website) nationally affiliated schools, describing their curriculums.

Table 2.

Nationally affiliated schools’ curriculum descriptions.

School	National affiliation	Curriculum			Description of curriculum from website
School	National affiliation	Primary	Lower Secondary	Upper Secondary	Description of curriculum from website
Tanglin Trust School	British	British based	British based	British based or IBDP students may choose which pathway to take	‘Our British-based curriculum is flexible and tailored to our location in Singapore’. (Tanglin Trust School, 2022)
American International School of Guangzhou	US	PYP and US based (Common Core and American Education Reaches Out {AERO})	US based (Common Core and AERO)	US based school diploma and/or IBDP students may choose IBDP in addition to the diploma	We ‘balance American curriculum with an international perspective’. (American International School of Guangzhou, 2022)
Canadian International School, Tokyo	Canadian	PYP	Canadian (Prince Edward Island)	Canadian (Prince Edward Island) and US based (Advanced Placement) students may choose AP classes in addition to Canadian diploma	‘Our Canadian curriculum reinforced by international standards’. (CIS Tokyo, 2022)
German International School, Washington D.C.	German school abroad	German	German and US based students can graduate with two qualifications: German DIA and diploma from state of Maryland		‘The school has a challenging German curriculum mixed with some American elements’. (German International School Washington D.C., 2022)
Australian International School, Singapore	Australian	PYP underpinned by Australian curriculum	Year 6–8 Australian curriculum	Australian curriculum Higher School Certificate or IBDP students may choose which pathway to take	‘True to our focused, distinctly Australian ethos, students at AIS enjoy an international education underpinned by the standards and content of the Australian Curriculum’. (Australian International School, 2022)
Australian International School, Singapore	Australian	PYP underpinned by Australian curriculum	Year 9–10 UK based (IGCSE)

A selection of five schools does not present a case for generalisation about all schools of this type; however, it is an indication that there are established schools with a national affiliation that are morphing into ‘less nationally guided’ international schools (Tarc and Mishra Tarc, 2015: 36), yet, still grounding themselves in a version of their national curriculum and/or ethos. This allegiance could be in place for several reasons: a belief in the educational value of the curriculum; a need for accreditation from a recognised association; a desire to appeal to expatriates from the particular country, whilst also appealing to local families; or a combination of these (or other) reasons. In their paper about British elite private schools, Bunnell, Courtois and Donnelly suggest that ‘[t]he appeal of a “British education” influences the way schools present themselves’ (2020: 694); it would be interesting to understand if another nationality could replace ‘British’ in this sentence, and it would still hold true. Whether it would or not, it appears that the nationally affiliated school has evolved, or is beginning to evolve, in such a way that there is a group of schools, yet to be defined, that are no longer ‘transplanted national schools’ but are something more nuanced and complex within the international school arena.

Within this landscape, Bunnell suggests that these schools, such as the British schools described previously, ‘might best be described as “Internationally-British”’ (2019: 5); he also argues that ‘Internationally-French’ and ‘Internationally Japanese’ may also exist (2019: 15). Wu and Koh (2022) describe ‘similar constructions such as the “Internationally American,” “Internationally Canadian”, and “Internationally Australian” schools’ (2022: 1); Savva makes a more general statement when she states that ‘the strategic partnering of “national” and “international” schools seems like a timely endeavour that would benefit from further exploration’ (Savva, 2017: 587). It is with these varied schools in mind that a type of school that I have termed as ‘internationally-national’ is emerging. In this concept, internationally-national schools are those that fall under the international school definition for this article, in that they provide an alternative to local or national education options. To distinguish them from other international schools, internationally-national schools:

• Align themselves with one or more nationalities, either in name, curriculum, ethos, marketing description or a combination of these.

• May or may not use an international curriculum such as IB; however, if in use, this is underpinned in some form by a national curriculum.

• Aim to incorporate and recognise an international dimension to the school.

• Are open for enrolment to citizens of any country, including the host country (if permitted by law).

Internationally-national versus internationalised

It is worth noting at this point that the internationally-national concept I am proposing is separate from internationalised schools as described in international school research. Internationalised schools can take many forms, and different authors use the term to describe a range of school types and concepts. For example in China, where local students are prohibited from attending traditional international schools, Poole uses the term to describe a school that incorporates the Chinese National curriculum with international aspects such as IB or foreign languages (Poole 2020: 449); these schools appear ‘to be unique to the Chinese context’ (2020: 448) and according to Poole, require ‘decoupling’ from the ‘traditional and normative constructions of the international school’ (2020: 449). Hattingh (2016)referred to internationalised secondary schools as local schools in English-speaking countries (e.g. US, Canada and Australia) that admit international students. Bunnell (2019: 13) used the term internationalised in describing local schools that offer one of the IB curriculums, such as the 56 Chicago public schools that offer MYP, and Yemini and Fulop (2015: 528) suggest in their ‘analysis of four internationalised Israeli schools’ in the national education context, internationalisation is bringing an international or intercultural dimension to the school (2015: 546). In all of these cases, internationalisation is based in local/national education in its indigenous context, distinct from the internationally-national concept which is always located in a host country, that is, a country that is different to that of the school’s national identifier/affiliation.

Internationally-national schools in literature

It is certainly true that ‘[r]esearch on international schools has evolved alongside the development and growth of international schools worldwide’ (Dolby and Rahman, 2008: 689); it would also be fair to say that the vast majority of this research has centred around the more prominent IB World schools than other types of international schools (Schippling, 2018: 197). Though many internationally-national schools have been in existence for some time, there is little research that exists about this type of school. Bunnell’s 2019 book ‘highlighted a developing trend involving the expansion’ of Internationally-British schools (Wu and Koh, 2022: 1), as well as touching on Internationally Canadian, Australian, American and Japanese (Bunnell, 2019). There are occasional articles that discuss one particular national affiliation, such as the Bunnell et al. article regarding overseas branches of elite British schools (Bunnell et al., 2020), Wu and Koh’s article regarding these schools in China specifically (2022), or an article by Mahfouz et al. discussing the use of Common Core in US international schools (Mahfouz et al., 2019); whilst this is not an exhaustive list, there is a noticeable lack of research into these types of schools.

With data indicating that international curriculum schools are not in the majority and a growing group of nationally affiliated schools defining themselves as international as well as national, the internationally-national concept is one that perhaps warrants more research attention; for this article, I aim to establish where this concept would fit within established typologies and frameworks of international schools.

Frameworks for classifying international schools

‘Ever since the dawn of the modern era of international schools, there have been those who have risen to the task’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2018: 3) of creating a ‘typology of the broad category of “international schools”’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2018: 3). However, the evolving nature of international schooling has made the categorisation of schools, or the demarcation of the boundaries of international and national, a difficult task (Bailey, 2021: 13). With this in mind, there are still several frameworks in existence that seek to define and classify international schools; the next section of the article will critically review a selection of these frameworks and place the internationally-national concept within each one. These are not the first typologies created, Hill suggests that ‘arguably the first typology’ was created by Knight and Leach in 1964 (Hill 2015: 60), nor can they definitively be called ‘the most popular’ of the typologies used. They are certainly well-cited in international schools research, and this formed the reason for their inclusion in this article.

The following frameworks for classifying international schools will be used:

• Hayden and Thompson’s 2013 A, B and C categorisation;

• Sylvester’s 1998 inclusive and encapsulated schools;

• Hill’s 2016 National-International school continuum.

Hayden and Thompson (2013) International School Typology

In their ‘now paradigmatic typology’ (Poole, 2021: 28), Hayden and Thompson devised three subgroups of international schools. These are:

• Type A ‘traditional’ international schools: established for families of expatriates ‘for whom the local education system is not considered appropriate’.

• Type B ‘ideological’ international schools: established in order to bring students together from around the world to ‘be educated together with a view to promoting global peace and understanding’.

• Type C ‘non-traditional’ international schools: established for local children of the host country – those that are ‘socio-economically advantaged’ who pursue a ‘perceived… higher quality’ education than that provided by their local system (2013: 5).

This oft-cited typology has been created based on the antecedents of international schools, the ‘why were they established?’, as well as ‘who were they established for?’. Type A schools are established for expatriate children seeking a ‘home’ experience and are traditionally not-for-profit schools. The origins of an international education, that is, international peace and harmony through teaching international mindedness to a diverse group of pupils, are found in Type B schools; this is often taught through an international curriculum such as the IB. Finally, Type C schools have ‘reconfigured’ (Bunnell et al., 2016) the international school market with a pragmatic approach to providing education to those families seeking a ‘social advantage’ for their children (Gibson and Bailey, 2021: 4). These schools are usually profit-making and are often ‘seen as a springboard to university entrance’ into Western universities (Hayden and Thompson, 2013: 7) by the host country population. Offering their typology around ‘cohort and curriculum’ (Gibson and Bailey, 2021: 4), Hayden and Thompson (2013) have created three distinctive subgroups of international schools.

Critique of Hayden and Thompson (2013) typology

In trying to create a framework to categorise an area that has no clear or widely accepted definition, Hayden and Thompson’s (2013) framework has attracted criticism. It should be noted that the authors acknowledged that this typology was already ‘in need of an update’ just 5 years after it was created (Hayden and Thompson, 2018), demonstrating the rapid development of the international schools sector. As they admit, much of their work in this area ‘predates the vast expansion of international schools and school systems over the last decade’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2018: 3). Nonetheless, even without an update, the distinction between types of schools does create boundaries that may not exist, as international schools are ‘not a collection of homogenous institutions’ (Bittencourt and Willetts, 2018: 517); many international schools may ‘segue between the types’ (Gibson and Bailey, 2021: 4). For example, in Malaysia, schools that were originally founded for expatriate populations changed demographics when government restrictions on local enrolment were relaxed; they are now straddling the Type A and Type C boundaries. In some cases worldwide, this is to maintain the financial security of the school, as ‘the fluidity of the expatriate population can significantly impact on student attrition rates, having a proportion of the student body from the local community…provides international schools with some stability’ (Velliaris and Willis, 2013: 231), in others it is to reinvent themselves for a local population (Pearce, 2013: 8).

A second criticism is the summation that Type B schools using IB curriculum are in fact ‘largely monocultural’; whilst it is ‘international at the content level, western thought remains the cornerstone of its epistemology’ (Van Oord, 2007: 387). Gardner-McTaggart (2018: 113) asserts that IB schools ‘provide access to Englishness, under the mantle of (Anglo-European) internationalism’; it should be noted here that the IB programmes can be taught and assessed in French and Spanish (International Baccalaureate Organization, 19/4/2022), moving away from the ‘Englishness’ to which Gardner-McTaggart refers, though still European and, as content remains unchanged, epistemologically Western. This criticism of IB schools is twofold in relation to this typology: firstly, there is the suggestion that these schools are not providing the ideologically grounded international education (from a curriculum perspective) that they purport to, and secondly, even if their intention is to do so, with Westernness/Anglo-Europeanness/Englishness the perceived key to future success and the basis for the curriculum, these schools are potentially blurring the lines between the three typologies.

The third criticism relates to the nomenclature used to classify the school types. The use of A, B and C reflects a hierarchy of superiority, as well as, as Poole believes, ‘a value judgement about a school’s “international legitimacy”’ (2021: 38). In addition, Type C schools are referred to as non-traditional, defined as something they are not, rather than by something they are; they are defined ‘in terms of a negation’ (Poole, 2021: 38).

Internationally-national schools within Hayden and Thompson typology

The question of placing internationally-national schools within the Hayden and Thompson (2013) framework is one that is hard to generalise given that much of the typology is based on the origins of the school, not its current manifestation. On the face of it, in their current states, many of these schools fit within the Type C bracket, less for their ‘curriculum’ and more for their ‘cohort’; they are British, American, Canadian or Australian schools by ethos and curriculum and wave the national flag in their marketing amongst both expatriate and local populations, however they still welcome, at least in part, the growing middle class of their host country (Bunnell, 2019). Even those with origins in Type A have expanded their cohorts beyond their own expatriate nationals; for example, Tanglin Trust School now has students from 53 nationalities (Tanglin Trust School, 2022, 8/3/2022), including Singaporeans, who are ordinarily forbidden from attending international schools unless dispensation is granted by the Ministry of Education (Ministry of Education, 19/4/2022), demonstrating the willingness of local populations to circumvent their own national systems in an effort to seek out an alternative, and the willingness of the school to accept them.

Conversely, there are those countries where the local population is not large enough to financially sustain the school; for example, in 2016, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had the highest number of international school students in the world, yet locals made up approximately 10% of total population (The Official Portal of the UAE Government, 8/3/2022), with the rest a mix of 200 nationalities. These schools cater to almost all expatriate children, with some locals, with a variety of national curriculums (e.g. American, British and Australian); they are neither Type A nor C.

By their very nature, internationally-national schools cannot fall within the Type B category, as per the definition stated earlier, as their curriculum is underpinned by a national system and not a purely international curriculum.

The Hayden and Thompson (2013) typology does not, in its current form, acknowledge internationally-national schools within the international schools landscape. The clear demarcations between each type require that schools ignore large parts of their origins, ethos, curriculum or cohort in order to find a ‘best fit’. Representing the categories in a manner that encourages fluidity and/or overlap, such as a Venn diagram, would be helpful in updating the typology and categorising internationally-national schools.

Sylvester’s (1998) inclusive and encapsulated school missions

In order to group international schools according to their ‘purported mission’ (Jabal, 2013: 4), Sylvester (1998) created two distinct and dichotomous categories: inclusive versus encapsulated. Classifying the ‘universals’ of an international education as devised by Hayden and Thompson (1995) as essential to an ‘inclusive’ school mission, Sylvester went on to suggest that ‘it would be of value to identify a divergent direction on this road and articulate those dimensions that stand in distinction to the universals’ (1998: 187), calling this the ‘encapsulated’ school mission. The characteristics of these diverse missions are as follows:

Inclusive:

• Diversity in student cultures

• Teachers as exemplars of international mindedness

• Exposure to others of different cultures outside of the institutions

• A balanced and formal curriculum

• A management regime value consistent with institutional philosophy (Sylvester, 1998: 186)

Encapsulated:

• Limited diversity of parent/student cultures

• Teaching limited to culture-specific pedagogy

• School tends to manage the multicultural experience

• Curriculum is narrowly targeted

• Value system a product of an imported school culture (Sylvester, 1998: 192)

In putting these missions into practice, inclusive schools are those that promote and uphold a worldview, with ‘30–40 student nationalities…probably required for diversity’ (Sylvester, 1998: 187), and curriculums based on ‘the best curriculum tools and models world-wide’ (Sylvester, 1998: 190). They are schools that do not embrace one culture as the dominant and seek ‘continually to attract wider and wider aspects of diversity’ (Sylvester, 1998: 187). As opposed to this, encapsulated schools are built with ‘cellophane walls’ (Leach, 1969: 9) in order to separate them from their host countries. Diversity may be present in student nationality, though ‘they uphold ethno-nationality as the marker of the greatest import and the primary mode of experiencing school life’ (Jabal, 2013: 5); there is a dominant subgroup to which others are welcomed and trained to assimilate.

Critique of Sylvester’s (1998) inclusive and encapsulated school missions

Once again, much like the criticism of Hayden and Thompson’s (2013) typology, there are critics of the inclusive and encapsulated mission typology. In a general criticism of international school frameworks which certainly relates to this one, Bunnell (2021b: 141) stated that ‘[a] fundamental flaw in the static, non-dynamic dichotic model is the notion that there merely or largely exist two extremes, which does not help to explain (logically) what holds the arena together’; there is no room for schools to have aspects of each type.

Another criticism which could be made is the bias with which the two types have been explained. As the type A/B/C typology suggests that one type is superior to another, Sylvester also alludes to this; the choice of language in the description of each characteristic makes it clear that an inclusive school mission is far more preferable to an encapsulated (see Table 3). For example, teachers in an inclusive school are ‘the best’ and approach ‘questions of diversity in a principled manner’, whereas teachers in an encapsulated school ‘find it difficult to engender truly world-minded views’. This description, among others, clearly demonstrates Sylvester’s assertion that inclusive schools hold superiority over encapsulated.

Table 3.

Comparison of language choice in describing inclusive and encapsulated missions (language examples have been extracted from Sylvester, 1998).

Characteristic	Inclusive	Encapsulated
Student/parent cultures	Significant and positive impact	All other groups in the school stand outside the central sphere of influence
	Accept student diversity as an enriching act	One student culture dominates the life of the school
	Move between the borders of cultural perspectives with a much higher level of comfort and understanding	Attract…diversity without having to question or abandon their nationally based curriculum
Teaching/teachers	Open-ended plan of recruiting the best teachers world-wide	Teacher training assumptions are naturally implanted into the school culture
Teaching/teachers	Characterised by an approach to questions of diversity in a principled manner	Find it difficult to engender truly world-minded views of teaching and learning
Cultural experience	High level of dialogue that would require compassion, suspension of judgement and a rigorous assessment of the facts	View of the world help by many of the students is largely ‘foreign’ or ‘distant’
		Students would be expected to embrace their parents’ worldview
		Diversity is seen as desirable but not at the core of the school’s mission and therefore is subordinated to the need to pass on the central values of the school
Curriculum	Sources of knowledge ...would be global and the view of humanity universal	The dominant group is…protected explicitly
Curriculum	Subjects viewed from the widest angle with contributions from the world’s civilisations	Schools perceive themselves as detached from their home base and culture
Value system	A culture of consultation would replace purely democratic practices	School mission is limited by its own vision and its underlying fear of what lies ‘outside’ the boundaries of a known national tradition
Value system		Diversity only at arm’s length and without a conviction…that there is a wisdom and knowledge in the full range of human diversity

The criticism here is not that there is an opinion on which school is better than another, because as Becker (1967: 239) states, ‘we cannot avoid taking sides, for reasons firmly based in social structure’. However, when presenting findings, researchers should ‘use our theoretical and technical resources to avoid the distortions that might introduce into our work’ (Becker, 1967: 247); I would argue that with the use of language (a technical resource) in the descriptions of these typologies, Sylvester has not managed to ‘avoid the distortions’ of his bias against ‘encapsulated schools’, which would make it difficult for any school to willingly define themselves as encapsulated.

Internationally-national schools within Sylvester’s (1998) typology

Bias aside, if the inclusive and encapsulated is to be taken at face value, where do internationally-national schools fit? Upon first reading, it appears that internationally-national schools are firmly in the encapsulated camp. The ethos and values are ‘a product of an imported school culture’ and most staff are recruited from one country. From the outside, these schools seem very much surrounded by the ‘cellophane walls’ mentioned earlier. However, there is a possibility that the lines blur. For example, teachers that have been recruited from one country may, by the very act of moving to another country, expand their worldview. In her study on national teachers moving to an international context, Savva found that ‘the overseas context [is] one that has noteworthy potential in facilitating the intercultural development of educators’ (2017: 587), which could lead to ‘truly world-minded views of teaching and learning’ (Sylvester, 1998: 193); could the same be said for students and parents? Whilst undeniably grounded in one national curriculum, there is potential that content can still be sourced from a range of civilisations and global contributions; without observing lessons or reading curriculum planning, this is difficult to categorise.

Although there is no doubt that there are those that ‘expressly want to translate a school tradition from one country into another’ (Wickins and Edwards, 2018: 265), there are those that are actively seeking an international perspective; they may not completely meet the inclusive typology, but the cellophane walls may appear to have some deliberately placed holes, allowing diversity and international values to seep in.

Hill’s (2016) National-International school continuum

In 2016, Hill acknowledged the difficulties in defining international schools and looked to consider ‘a way forward’ in understanding international schools and the difference between them and international education; as shown earlier ‘they are not necessarily one and the same’ (2016: 9). Hill suggests that unlike the other typologies presented, international schools should be defined by the ‘nature of the school itself’ and not by its student or staff population, its profit-making status or its ‘raison d’être’ (2016: 9).

Hill’s National-International school continuum (Figure 1) attempts to demonstrate that there are ‘degrees’ to which schools are national or international, that it is not a binary choice. At one end of the continuum there are ‘pure national state schools’ and ‘pure national independent (private) schools’; at the other end is the ‘pure international school’ (Hill, 2016). The criteria for each of these ideals are replicated in Figure 1. Hill acknowledges that the ‘pure type rarely exists’ of any of the three types of schools mentioned; this continuum ‘allows for all possible variations…on a scale of 0 to 10’ (2016: 13).

Figure 1.

National-International school continuum (Hill, 2016: 13).

Though it has been suggested in other frameworks that a culturally diverse student body will ensure an international education programme and a homogenous student body will mean a nationally-based education, Hill recognises that the ‘reality is far more complex’ (2016: 14), that there are many state schools offering IB programmes, and equally there are many nationally-based curriculum international schools. This complexity is demonstrated in the criteria laid out in Hill’s article, written to complement the continuum and allow a school to be categorised mathematically in regards to its ‘adherence to that of a pure international school’ (Hill, 2016: 15) or a pure national school (0 being closer to that of a national school). Table 4 is a representation of each criterion in an effort to ‘see how they might be expressed through descriptors in some quantifiable terms’ (Hill, 2016: 15).

Table 4.

Criteria and descriptors for being an international school (Hill, 2016).

	Reason school was established	Education programme	Nature of student body	Cultural diversity of governing body	Tuition fees
0	To educate local children of the nation where the school is located	National programme of the Ministry of Education in the country where the school is located	Host country nationals are 100% of total student body	All are nationals of the school’s host or home country	None
1	To educate local children and attract a small number of overseas students for boarding	National programme of the Ministry of Education in the country where the school is located, incorporating a deliberate international perspective	Host country nationals are at least 75% of total student body	75% are nationals of the school’s host or home country	Partial payment of tuition fees
2	To educate the children of families living abroad with a small percentage of local students from the host country	National programme of the Ministry of Education in the country where the school is located together with a recognised international education programme – students choose	Host country nationals are at least 50% of total student body	50% are nationals of the school’s host or home country	Tuition fees to cover the costs of some teachers
3	To bring students from around the world together in one place to offer an education for international mindedness	A recognised international education programme in a school to educate local children of the nation where the school is located	Host country nationals are at least 25% of total student body	25% are nationals of the school’s host or home country	Full tuition fees apply
4	To educate the children of families living abroad	National programme of a Ministry of Education not from the country in which the school is located and in a school set up to educate the children of families living abroad	Host country nationals are at 0% of total student body	10% are nationals of the school’s host or home country
5	To provide an education for international mindedness for the children of families living abroad	A recognised international education programme in a school established to educate the children of families living abroad

Like Hayden and Thompson’s typology, Hill does put weighting on the purpose of the school, which he believes is ‘perhaps the most important factor in determining whether a school is more national or international’ (2016: 15 original italics); it is this that will put the school in the 0–5 or 5–10, with the other criteria there to establish the precise position of the school on the continuum.

Critique of Hill’s National-International school continuum

The criticism that has been directed at the Hayden and Thompson typology, as well the Sylvester typology, is certainly not warranted in this case; there is a clear flexibility between the types of schools, acknowledging that there are possible shades of internationalness in schools across the world. One critique could be directed at the criterion for the student body (see Table 4); if a ‘pure’ international school is one that has culturally diverse students and staff, why are host country students excluded from this diversity? Making a blanket decision that 0% of the students can be from the host country (and no criterion for the diversity of the background of the non-host country nationals) seems to defy the values of a purely ideology-driven school that disregards nationality and doesn’t allow one group to be dominant. I would argue that by not admitting host country nationals, the ‘other’ or ‘foreign’ group become dominant over the local population outside of the school gates. This argument could also be directed at the reason for the school being established, particularly for score 3 and 5; again, admitting host country students is considered to swing the pendulum away from the ideal international school, even in an attempt to promote international mindedness. Haywood (2003: 147) argues, ‘some “purists” think that this [admitting host country nationals] might affect educational standards and detract from the international experience for students, but this argument can be strongly contested through a combination of visionary as well as pragmatic goals’, and Tate (2021: 117) believes that ‘international schools should use their host country as an exemplar of a nation state…and get to know a wide range of its people from different backgrounds (including those both inside and outside the school)’.

As the school market changes and adapts, so should the recognition that host country students should not be excluded from international schools and we should perhaps ‘applaud an increased number of host country students…alongside a culturally diverse group’ (Hill, 2016: 11), although I would consider changing this sentiment to ‘as part of a culturally diverse group’ to truly represent an inclusive approach.

Internationally-national schools within the Hill (2016) continuum

The flexibility of this continuum lends itself very well to positioning the internationally-national school concept under the international school umbrella. Any school claiming to be international can use the continuum and criteria to determine where they sit within the two ideals, giving schools the opportunity to ‘become increasingly responsible for defining the [international school] term for themselves’ (Meyer, 2019: 9). It also moves away from the homogeneity that other frameworks suggest, with stakeholders able to find an exact fit for their school or institution. An internationally-national school that identifies as a fee-paying national curriculum school, with some host country nationals, which would be encapsulated according to Sylvester, nothing more than a ‘transplanted national school’ (1998: 186), can still legitimately refer to itself as international according to the Hill National-International school continuum.

Despite criticism of some of the specific criteria as created by Hill (2016), the overall flexibility of a continuum is one that allows for both current international schools, including internationally-national, and any further permutations that may evolve in the future.

Conclusion

This article has set out to define and understand the concept I have characterised as the internationally-national school, an emerging subsection of the international school landscape. Through critical analysis of three frameworks used in classification and categorisation of international schools I have positioned this concept within each, building a picture of where internationally-national schools fit in current international school research.

The world in which international schools exist is changing rapidly, leaving international schools to adapt to their new surroundings. In 2001, Cambridge and Thompson lamented that there was no commonly accepted definition of an international school (in Keller, 2015: 902); in 2022, this is still the case, in an even more difficult position due to the ‘maelstrom of institutional heterogeneity which presents a challenge in interpretation’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2018: 3). Without a single definition, the frameworks in this article have been designed to support all stakeholders (leaders, teachers, parents, etc.) to categorise each international school for their own purposes, to ‘bring order to the diverse range of schools that might be considered to belong to [the international schools] grouping’ (Hayden and Thompson, 2016: 11).

The internationally-national concept in international schools is slowly being brought into the ‘diverse’ fold of international school research as the market develops and these types of schools become a significant part of the landscape. Once transplanted national schools that provided only for children from the home country, internationally-national schools are now travelling down a more nuanced and complex path that defies being pegged into one homogenous category of school; they have moved beyond both their ‘national’ and ‘international’ labels to create a new model of international school, the internationally-national school.

The critiques of the frameworks presented here, from Hayden and Thompson (2013), Sylvester (1998) and to a lesser extent Hill (2016), have determined that they are in need of an update in order to encompass the growing range of international schools, including the internationally-national school. It should be recognised that these typologies do, in their current forms, present a sound basis for the origins, breadth and differences of international schools; however, the Type A/B/C typology, nor the inclusive/encapsulated frameworks, are not able to naturally adapt to the ‘flux and transition’ (Poole, 2021: 39) within the international school sector.

In conclusion, when creating a definition of international schools and their subsections, such as internationally-national, or when creating frameworks for classifying such schools, the definitions and frameworks need to be inclusive; they need to ensure that ‘all schools that describe themselves in such terms should be able to identify’ (Haywood, 2003: 148) if they are to be useful in any way. I would argue that whilst definitions are useful for those in the international schools sector (and those choosing to send children to schools within the sector), as Hayden and Thompson suggested, what is more important is ‘what takes place educationally, within and outwith the institution’ (2018: 3).

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sarah Pearce

Author biography

Sarah Pearce is currently the Head of Primary at a school in Dubai, having previously led and taught at schools in the USA, China, Malaysia and UAE. She is currently studying for a Doctorate of Education, with an interest in international schools.

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