Discover Your Potential with International School Affiliate

I grew up in East London, where the schools were as varied as the weather: sometimes inspiring, often underfunded, always full of character. It was there that I first saw how education could either lift children to astonishing heights or, if mishandled, weigh them down with systems that seemed designed to test patience more than learning. That early experience shaped not just my teaching, but my belief that schools should be judged by the only measure that truly matters: what happens to the students inside them.

As Head of Accreditation with International School Affiliate (ISA), my role is to ensure that accreditation doesn’t become an exercise in bureaucracy. For too long, accreditation has meant sitting in beige meeting rooms for months at a time, filling binders and online folders with transactional appilations. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz once wrote about “thick description” the idea that meaning is layered and only emerges when you look past the superficial. Yet many traditional accreditation systems remain the opposite: thin, mechanical, and divorced from the actual life of a school.

What we do at International School Affiliate is markedly different. We work in consultation. Instead of scrutinising paperwork and corperate visions, we walk corridors, sit in lessons, and speak with the people who bring a school to life. It is less about catching schools out, and more about standing beside them helping leaders reflect, helping teachers refine, and above all making sure students get the kind of education they deserve. Paulo Freire warned against education becoming “banking” a system where knowledge is simply deposited. Accreditation can sometimes push schools closer into that trap: a transaction of documents instead of transformation of practice. Our work aims to break that cycle.

My experience has been fortunate and varied. I have accredited schools in Switzerland, where efficiency and precision are matched by an enviable alpine backdrop; in Japan, where discipline and quiet commitment often disguise deep wells of creativity; in Vietnam, where international and national streams intertwine in classrooms alive with possibility; and in South America, in Peru, where schools are deeply rooted in community, history, and cultural pride yet always looking outward to global best practice. In every context, the principles are the same: the students must remain at the centre, and the school must be supported to grow in ways that are authentic, not performative.

The academic literature is on our side. Michael Fullan argues that change in schools only lasts when it is driven by shared values and collective capacity. Andy Hargreaves reminds us that professional capital; trust, collaboration, and expertise is what sustains improvement. Accreditation, if it is to matter at all, should build those things, not erode them.