Shaping a Generation of Creative and Resilient Global Citizens – A Generation That Will Change Our World for the Better

The British International School Budapest (BISB), part of the prestigious Nord Anglia Education family, is a vibrant and warm community with a strong and well-deserved reputation. The School is proud of its excellent academic results and university destinations – just as of achieving these results alongside the development of the skills and dispositions necessary to thrive in today's exciting and rapidly changing world.

As interim Principal Chris Russell explains to Diplomacy&Trade, The British International School Budapest has a long-standing reputation for excellence. “We see excellent academic outcomes as non-negotiable and we are looking at the broadest holistic aspects of education, thinking about how we can develop the skills and dispositions that the students will need to become well-rounded and successful individuals. To start with, we do that through having very high-quality teachers. In the classroom, it is achieved through a broad conceptualization of schooling and a holistic provision. This manifests itself not just in lessons that they do on a daily basis, but also in our co-curricular learning provision as well as plenty of opportunities for the students to engage in taking themselves out of their comfort zones and developing those components.”

The School ensures a strong sense of community, this provides a psychological safety net so that the students feel equipped to take risks and grow. The institution works hard to recruit high quality teachers and then continue to develop them professionally. Also, they ensure that students are exposed to opportunities to explore their passions and interests and push themselves beyond what they thought they were capable of, he adds.

Why choose BISB?
“We offer excellence across all aspects of our provision. It's not just in one aspect such as academics or sports or the performing arts or student leadership or other components of our education, but we offer excellence across all of those strands and students that start with us, very quickly become part of our student community and grow into incredible individuals. We see that on a yearly basis with our graduating classes that go to the best universities in the world and more and more step into positions of responsibility,” Chris Russell highlights.

The British International School Budapest is part of the prestigious Nord Anglia Education family. This is a great benefit as BISB is part of a group of some 90 schools globally. All of the students have the opportunities to connect with other students around the world through Global Campus, which is an online portal, as well as through trips, residentials and competitions.

“We have sports competitions across Europe where we compete with other Nord Anglia schools. Just recently, we have some students going off to Houston, TX for a social impact convention. Students travel all around Europe and we have a camp in Tanzania where students go and do social impact work. At BISB, we create life changing learning experiences for our students through our global collaborations with The Juilliard School, MIT, UNICEF and IMG Academy. On top of that, our teachers benefit from the very best professional development. We have two teachers working on Project Zero, a research project around metacognition and how we can develop that in students. From a teacher's perspective, there are lots of opportunities for professional development here. There is a network of professionals across the Nord Anglia Education group to collaborate with, learn alongside resulting in the implementation of the very best in innovative pedagogical practice into their teaching. It is also about the provision that we have to develop our teachers and school leaders into the very best that they can be and offer the very best education to the students in our school,” he stresses.

Small class sizes at BISB allow for more of an individualized attention to the students allowing better support through monitoring, intervention, guidance and challenge. BISB provision also provides the freedom to interact and other aspects beyond the classroom, which ensure that the students develop as much as they can.

Chris Russell reiterates that “academic results are non-negotiable for us. Our students consistently achieve well above global and regional averages. In the IB Diploma where the global average is about 30, our students consistently achieve an average of 34 or more points with around a quarter of them achieving 40 or more points. This allows them to access the very best universities in the world such as Cambridge, the London School of Economics (LSE), University College London (UCL), the top universities in the Netherlands, Bocconi in Italy and then across in the United States as well.”

Holistic education
BISB is proud of adopting a holistic approach to education going beyond traditional classroom learning. “We do have academic subjects as well, but we also have a strong offer across the sports and performing arts in addition to a lot of opportunities for students to engage in social impact work. A really well-designed scope and sequence of student leadership starts right the way down with our youngest students,” the interim Principal says.

He emphasises that they work on the premise that empowering students starts with high-quality learning. “I already mentioned metacognition but we also want to empower them through values and develop a strong values framework within them. Then, building on the foundation of those two, we want them to have a sense of agency and take action. We encourage our five/six-year-old ‘mini change makers’, who are year one, to take on projects where they have an impact in our community. For instance, some of our younger students led a project to rewild our campus with spring flowers learning about how that could make a nicer environment and take some ecological responsibility. This engagement extends right the way up to our older students who are looking at fast fashion and how we can look at reducing our impact on the environment. We even engage students in school development so that they will come and present us ways in which they think we can use our resources better. Another example is that of 17-year-olds who presented a proposal for changing the taps, as simple as that, and explained how it was not only economically more sensible, but that it would also reduce our water consumption.”

Social impact
Speaking of social impact, he notes that the School has just received a gold distinction on that. “It is based on teaching the students about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Charter for the Rights of the Child, so that they understand those two areas and then create an environment where everyone is respected and there is dignity. It also provides them with opportunities to take action. In the IB Diploma Programme, they have to take on service learning and lead projects, which have a positive impact on either the school or our local or global communities.”

Co-curricular learning takes many forms. BISB has a Model United Nations where students discuss and recognize the challenges that the globe is facing and engage in active discussion, debate and public speaking. Additionally, the interim Principal’s favourite is the Duke of Edinburgh International Award: “students have to go and carry out an expedition, a two-day one, where they carry their own food and belongings with them. Alongside that, in order to qualify for the award, they have to commit to activity and service as well. All in all, our social impact work involves empowering through learning, empowering through values, empowering to act. This is what we have focused on in the last couple of years, and it's probably one of the things I'm most proud of. Our students are keen, equipped and confident to make a positive impact on the world.”

Curiosity makes strong communicators
In today's rapidly changing world, there are skills and mindsets that are most crucial for students to acquire. As to how this school equips students with all these for future success, the word that comes to Chris Russell’s mind first is ‘deliberately’. “We have what we call learner ambitions, which is part of how we develop metacognitive strategies. I think the most important of all is curiosity that you can engender not just about how water turns to ice from an academic perspective, but also curiosity about other people and how different perspectives can manifest themselves. With all that in mind, we try and build strong communicators. All of our students take at least two languages all the way through to the end of their time here, but most of them are tri- or quadrilingual. We want them to be confident communicators verbally and in written format and to be able to collaborate with different groups. We do a lot of group work in the classrooms to ensure that they are not just collaborating with people like themselves as we have 70 nationalities in our school from all around the world from lots of different backgrounds. You get a better project when you work with people who think differently to you. I think some of the problems and challenges that humanity is going to face in the coming years are going to demand that ability to think creatively, solve problems and be able to work with people differently. We are very conscious that young people need to recognise that they have a responsibility to themselves and other people. We work to create a sense of care, kindness and compassion in our students as well. We do that internally through providing opportunities for them to work with younger students. That could be reading, leading projects alongside younger peers or simply offering support and advice. Through all that, we want them to understand that their actions can and will have an impact on other people, and we want that impact to be positive,” he points out.

Contact details:
Address: 1037 Budapest, Kiscelli köz 17.
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: + 36 1 200 9971
Website: www.bisb.hu

(This article has been supported by The British International School Budapest)