Accreditation for a school is quality assurance for parents that shows the school is measuring its performance against externally evaluated standards. The concept is like the ISO 9001 standard of quality management for businesses, but schools have accrediting agencies that specially design their standards for schools.
At AISVN, we are accredited by the the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO). The IBO authorizes us to provide our three curricular frameworks: Primary Years Programme (PYP) for Khám Phá to Grade 5; Middle Years Programme (MYP) for Grade 6-10 and the IB Diploma (DP) for Grade 11-12.
AISVN has been authorized to offer the IB Diploma Programme since 2010 and in 2020 we became fully authorized by the IB to offer PYP. We are currently in our final year of candidacy for the MYP.
There is a very similar process for each of our accrediting agencies. WASC agrees on its standards of accreditation and when we meet these standards we receive accreditation from the agencies. It is sort of a two-for-one deal, which is great for our school.
The WASC accreditation ensures that our graduates would be welcomed by schools in the USA.
The IB offers the gold standard for curriculum frameworks and being a 3-programme fully authorized IB school ensures for parents that AISVN is offering the best programs in the world and by extension, the best type of education. On the IB website, parents can find the IB Standards and Practices that authorized IB schools must meet.
Once a school is fully authorized in an IB programme then the IB does a re-authorization of the school every five years. Similarly, WASC also has a 5-year re-accreditation cycle for schools. The agencies recognize that a lot can change in schools and in education best practices in five years.
The great thing about the IB programme is that they are constantly being reviewed and the syllabi for courses are updated frequently with new course guides for teachers and related training. This ensures that our teachers are trained frequently and have the best tools available for delivering the program. Each IB course is ‘’stress-tested’’ for rigor and because some of the course work is difficult, we need well-trained teachers to provide it to our students. At AISVN we do not do the IB programme because they are easy – we do them because they are hard.
Future articles will describe the standards AISVN is held to in every area of our school operation.
