International School of Geneva

Founded in 1924, as the first ever international school, Ecolint has been proudly educating for a better world ever since.

Choosing a school – especially in the Geneva area - can be quite bewildering, with many establishments seeming to offer similar academic programmes, excellent extra-curricular opportunities and modern facilities.

There are many ways to join us on our mission. You could apply to be a student or a member of staff; you might be a visiting artist, musician, or guest speaker; you could volunteer to work with students in your area of specialism or consider making a donation to help our Foundation…the possibilities are endless. We are all interconnected and interdependent and that, of course, includes you.

Yes, we have a rich history as the world’s first international school and birthplace of the International Baccalaureate. We are happy to boast state of the art teaching facilities and three impressive campuses across Geneva and Vaud. We delight in our inclusive entry policy, which means students of all abilities are welcomed here, and our examination results that demonstrate the quality of our teaching. And we are proud to count many distinguished figures working in every sphere among our global alumni community.

But most of all we are hungry to do more. To reflect on where we can improve. To strive always to do better than our previous best. To learn from others. To innovate and develop our provision so that today’s students – and tomorrow’s – will be able to leave the world better than they found it.

We believe that what sets us apart – and why visitors from the Council for International Schools recently called Ecolint “an outstanding school” - are the following key reasons:

Founded by civil servants from the ILO and the League of Nations (the precursor to the UN) as the world’s first ever international school, we remain the most diverse school in the world. With 140 nationalities and 80 mother tongues, there is no school on earth that exposes students to such extraordinary international diversity.

We exist to educate for peace and to inculcate strong humanitarian values of inclusiveness, respect and inter-cultural understanding in everything we do. Resolutely not-for-profit, mankind is the only beneficiary of our work, not corporate shareholders or private equity firms.

Having espoused the concept of child-centred education since our foundation in 1924, we have been innovating pedagogically ever since. The birthplace of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, we are extremely proud of our rigorous academic approach and the results we achieve in all our programmes, especially in light of our inclusive admissions policy that means we never refuse a child entry on grounds of academic ability.

Our aim at the International School of Geneva is to provide a distinctive high quality international education through which all our students are helped to develop their abilities to the highest level of their potential. We respect students’ individual and cultural identities, encouraging them to become independent learners eager to carry on learning throughout their lives.

We prepare students for membership of communities that are socially and culturally diverse, for citizenship, and for engagement with the political, ethical and environmental challenges of their times. We expect them to want to take an active part in making their world a better place and one that is based on the mutual understanding, respect and shared values to which the school has been committed throughout its long history.

The International School of Geneva serves both the international and local communities of the Geneva area. We are committed to preparing students to live in a multilingual and multicultural world and, as a bilingual Foundation, to developing their fluency in both English and French.

The school exists for the sake of its students and is committed to a continual re-evaluation of their needs in the light of social, economic and cultural change. The school strives continually to promote excellence in all aspects of its provision, to do better than its previous best, and to model the values that it encourages in its students.

The main principles of an international education

A key element of this unity is a commitment to a particular kind of international education.

The Foundation has defined those main principles as follows:

• Encouraging important international values
• Supporting the student’s language development
• Ensuring an international dimension to the curriculum
• Recognising the importance of global issues
• Showing respect for, and integration with, the host country.