ICS - Accreditation and Affiliation

"From the initial tour on Sunday, through our visits to classrooms this week, we have been left with the overriding impression that the School is a community where teachers, students, staff and parents come together to learn in an atmosphere of mutual respect and caring…"

International Baccalaureate

ICS is an IB World School and is the only school in Zurich to be fully authorised by the International Baccalaureate to offer all three programmes of the International Baccalaureate. More information about the IB can be found on the International Baccalaureate Organisation's website.

Accreditation

The Inter-Community School, Zurich is fully accredited by the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC).

  • CIS describes its School Evaluation & Accreditation Process as a flexible, yet rigorous, vehicle for school improvement which leads to highly valued international recognition of the school. The process involves evaluation of a school in the light of the school’s own Guiding Statements (such as its Mission/Vision for Students/Educational Objectives,etc) and the CIS Standards for Accreditation. These Standards are designed to ensure that a school is offering an international education of high quality. The Standards contain many references to three “Driving Ideas” which urge the school to be Mission-driven and Vision-led; heavily focused on student learning and students' wellbeing; and and committed to Internationalism/Inter-Culturalism to foster Global Citizenship.
  • Accreditation of an institution by NEASC indicates that it meets or exceeds NEASC standards and criteria for the assessment of institutional quality periodically applied through a peer group review process. NEASC says: "An accredited school is one which has available the necessary resources to achieve its stated purposes through appropriate educational programs, is substantially doing so, and gives reasonable evidence that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Institutional integrity is also addressed through accreditation."

The statement at the top of this page appeared in the report by the Visiting Team from CIS / NEASC when they came to inspect ICS in late 2006. (Their follow-up Accreditation Visit took place in January 2012 and we are currently awaiting the Accreditation Report.) Please follow this link to read the Accreditation Summary. Hard copies of the full document can be found in the Secondary Library.

Further useful links