Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. [Sachs, 2002]

More than 50 years of accumulated experience in international education gives the International School of Paris the confidence to offer a bold vision for its future. Our renewed Vision, Mission and Strategic Plan will see us remain relevant, authentic, challenging and of our times. Lived experience has probably always felt complex, but both the terms and depth of its complexity have now changed. In a very important sense the modern world has become dramatically internationalised and it is communities such as ISP that have so much to offer as a model. Together with our partners in the educational world and in civil society, ISP will ensure that the student experience is rich, challenging and enabling.

The Guiding Statements and Strategic Plan provide a road-map for the school, allowing our children to engage with and succeed in an increasingly complex world. What counts as engagement or indeed success can be as diverse as the community we serve. However, they do require skills, attitudes of mind and dispositions of character that only emerge through a variety of learning experiences. The programmes of the International Baccalaureate and the Learner Profile are a permission-slip to make this happen. Such an inquiry-based and concept driven curriculum provide us with the ideal platform to become a research-led learning community. And, making a commitment to research brings with it a willingness to adapt and change according to findings.

We need to better understand, or better remember, our connections with and impact on the natural world. Both the delicacy and complexity of understanding needed to develop a planetary perspective on our actions, to have a fully functioning sense of consequence, have now become central educational imperatives.

The connectivity across the planet we now witness involves more than a digital revolution, crucial though this is. The enormous benefits of the network society need to be tempered by an understanding that it can just as easily generate division as it can foster collaboration. In what can feel like an increasingly post-national world, it is perhaps unsurprising that this has also triggered the rise of nationalism and the politics of identity; the wide horizons of globalisation make us look inward as well as out. As such, it has never been more urgent for young people to be socially, politically, ethically and culturally literate. While these literacies can be cultivated by the whole school community, there is a special role here for experiential and service learning.

It is difficult to imagine a more interesting time to be involved in learning. As such, it is our firm conviction that in an emergent and dynamic society, we should be and will be ‘educating for complexity’

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Guiding Statements

LEARNING FOR COMPLEXITY

• We are committed to the goals, values and standards of the IB programs.
• We prepare our students to recognize and respond to the challenges and uncertainties of a complex world.
• As a school we adapt and evolve to remain relevant and authentic in the context of a highly interconnected world.

EMBRACING DIVERSITY

• Engaging with cultural difference is a powerful learning experience.
• We recognize that performance cannot be measured solely by academic achievement. People have a multiplicity of talents and skills which should be encouraged and celebrated.
• By exploring controversial topics our students will learn to be at ease with uncertainty.

INQUIRY, INNOVATION AND LEARNING

• We recognize the importance of inspiring inquiry and innovation.
• Each member of our school community is engaged as an active learner.
• Learning is not a journey to a destination, it is a mindset. We encourage unlimited personal development in our students.
• We seek to equip our students with values, strategies and skills to navigate a constantly evolving landscape of information, resources and ideas.
• We encourage students to use creativity and imagination in their learning.
• The school participates actively in understanding and contributing to the development of innovative and influential educational practices.
• Research should be embedded in student learning and professional practice.

LEARNING TO BE WELL

• Student well-being is critical.
• We aim to develop in young people the resources, agility and imagination needed to live productively and sustainably.
• By embracing change our students will see challenges and setbacks as exciting learning opportunities.

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

• We investigate the changing landscape of identity.
• We place a social value on learning and understand the relationship between rights and duties.
• We seek to understand the interdependence of sustainable human living in social, economic, environmental and political structures.

LANGUAGE LEARNING

• We recognize that international education requires exceptional language learning through which students are able to communicate effectively, develop their cognitive abilities, discover their own identity and share that of others.

EXPERIENTIAL AND SERVICE LEARNING

• Students should discover what you learn from doing.
• We provide opportunities for our students to contribute, to collaborate and to learn that they can make a difference.
• Students have access to the unique learning that comes from a strong program of service to others.