While it depends on the nature of the services you need, it is always best to involve ISS as early in the school development process as possible. Ideally, ISS would like to partner with the client at the vision phase of the discussion well before the client commits extensive resources to school development.

Many architects do not have experience in campus planning or school design. School design is a highly specialized service. We can work with either a local architect familiar to the client or we can arrange campus planning/architectural services for the client with a firm with a reputation in school design on your behalf. Either way, it is important that ISS staff give feedback to every stage of the design to ensure that the school design will support the programs and teaching methodologies desired by the client. Our experience is that many quality architectural firms are not familiar enough with schools to make these determinations.

Typically, ISS begins its services with a site visit. One of the goals of the site visit is to determine feasibility including an assessment of “un-met” demand in the local market. This involves visiting other local schools, meeting with parents of potential students, visiting local chapters of the Chamber of Commerce, embassies, and local educational jurisdictions. The primary outcome of the site visit is what we call “vision consensus” or an agreement about expectations for the project and a clear understanding of the project’s feasibility.

This very much depends on several variables. For instance, what are the school’s requirements for wellness, fitness, and physical education? Are there security considerations that require deeper set-backs? Is the site irregular in shape or does it have difficult terrain for building? Is the school located in a rural, suburban, or urban area? These variables impact the the property requirements for any given school. As a general rule, the campus area should be equal to or greater than four times the area of the building footprint.

The size of the school is limited by the capacity of the school buildings, which in turn, are limited by the size of the site. But, there is a larger question of “how big is too big” for a school educationally. There is no universal agreement about the numerical limits of small and large schools; however, research indicates that an effective size for an elementary school is in the range of 300-400 students and that 400-800 students is appropriate for a secondary school.

This research would consider these figures to be the upper limits. Our own experience indicates that most international schools fit within these ranges of enrollment. If larger enrollments are necessary, ISS can provide advice on how to develop a ”school within a school” educational program creating the more personal campus environment for students in a larger enrollment campus.

Normally, for a K-12 school we would project a two-year construction period following the acquisition of the property, the school design, and the necessary building permits. This construction period could increase if the school enrollment exceeds 1,500 students or if there are difficult building conditions.

There is no one best curriculum. ISS has experience in American, International Baccalaureate (IB), and Cambridge (IGCSE) curriculum. Our primary experience is with American and IB curriculum. Our experience is to adapt curriculum to the culture of the host country and the school community. We don’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach.

We are happy to assist in the school’s accreditation. Indeed, ISS believes accreditation is an essential process for school startup. We have strong relationships with most of accrediting agencies. All ISS senior staff have all been involved in the accreditation process and many have served on accrediting teams. The accrediting agencies know that our managed schools will benefit from our extensive school improvement experience. They know we follow best practices and ethical standards, and that we possess the quality assurance tools to implement the steps to accreditation.

We are proudly non-profit, but we often work with clients who intend the school to be for-profit. We believe a quality educational program is the guarantee of profitability for our clients and success in our mission.

ISS has invested equity in school development projects in the past. However, this is our not our preferred role in school development and does not directly align with our mission. Rather, we prefer to partner with clients who have already secured the necessary financial assets for the development and the property secured to build.

Our business practice is shaped largely by our mission. We are dedicated to transforming education around the world and we are a non-profit. Having said that, we use proceeds from our enterprise activities, including school startup and management, to fund our initiatives in world languages, teacher training, and educational creativity. Besides school startup and management, our other core enterprises include education staffing, school supply, foundations, and curriculum and professional development. We leverage these in-house enterprises to provide our school startup and management clients full comprehensive support. Another key approach to our business model is our set of quality assurance tools leading to successful accreditation and institutional maturity.