In Belgium: BEPS International School is now an IB World School – we find out more.
Like most schools in Belgium, BEPS International School in Brussels welcomed its students back last week and shared some very big news: BEPS secondary school is now an official IB World School.
BEPS, located at the edge of Bois de la Cambre, has been busy over the last few years. It has not only opened a secondary school to join its existing primary, it became an authorised provider of the IB’s Middle Years Programme (MYP).
In many ways the secondary school is a completely new school. “We have taken the DNA of BEPS and an innovative start-up mentality, to produce something new and exciting. From conception, it was always our intention to create a school which looks forward,” says BEPS MYP Curriculum Coordinator Andrew Mitchell. It was because of this startup mindset that the team were able to complete the process of becoming an IB world school in such a short time. Many of the staff were new to the IB philosophy but their desire to work together to create a successful school meant that they worked exceptionally hard, not only to meet the rigours of the IB authorization process, but to match it with the BEPS vision and mission.
This is the first big step towards BEPS’ final IB goal – to be able to offer students the Diploma Programme (DP) and Career-related Programme (CP) , both internationally recognised programmes which will send them into the world with a coveted International Baccalaureate Diploma.
That will take a couple of years, as the school will expand to MYP 4 and 5 first. “Our students who are now in MYP 3, will be our first graduates of the MYP in two years’ time, and of the Diploma or Career-related programme in 4 years time,” explains Mitchell. “So all of the students who are in the school now will be able to finish their schooling with us.”
Becoming an IB World School is not an easy task. The IB has rigorous standards for academics, the school as a community and the development of a child’s sense of civic responsibility. “We needed to balance all this with our own approach, the desire to create a dynamic and authentic learning environment where the individual learner is challenged and supported.”
“There is a long, clear and thorough process that you have to go through to become an authorised IB school,” explains Hertay. “There are many different curricula that are used by international schools, but it was important that we used the IB framework to develop one that was in line with what we believe about learning.”
The founding team was behind the choice of the IB; it supported their own vision of what learning should be. “We believe in the development of students as learners for life, and this includes global citizenship,” says Hertay. “That means that when students make decisions, they will be based on a reflection of the consequences. That is the type of authentic learning that we want to develop in our students!”
