Building Partnerships for the Future of International Education

Great places of learning are like great companies or organizations in that they are built upon a small number of fundamental principles: vision, people, discipline and sustainability.

Of course, each principle impacts upon the other. After all, there is no point in having a clear and bright vision for the future of a learning institution if you don’t have the people, discipline and other resources needed to sustain your ideas over an extended period of time.

In his recent work, Leadership and Sustainability: Systems Thinkers in Action, Michael Fullan (Corwin Press, 2005) adds another perspective to this now common debate: ‘lateral capacity building’. Simply, Fullan argues that effective, sustainable schools have often learned the art of interdependence and purposeful exchange with other schools, organisations and networks.

Set against this context, at the International School of Brussels (ISB), we have begun to learn a valuable lesson. By looking beyond our own resources to other organisations, companies and individuals, who share our core values, we have seen a tangible and significant impact. In short, by actively searching out would-be travelling companions or ‘vision partners’ as we call them, we have discovered that we can go much further than we otherwise could on our own.

A ‘Benelux’ example will illustrate the point.

While an international education offers a wonderful, enriching experience, there is always the concern that students may lose their strong sense of personal, cultural identity. Similar to many international schools, ISB believes it is vital to appreciate one's own culture if one is to appreciate the cultures of others. We also know that a strong mother-tongue is extremely important in helping students acquire other languages. 

For these reasons we offer a range of mother-tongue programmes, now including Dutch. It was about three years ago that the school first identified the opportunity for a new kind of collaboration between the school, a group of parents, the Dutch embassy to Belgium and the Foundation for Dutch Education Abroad (Stichting NOB).

At the time, the school was home to about 50 students from the Netherlands. Today, there are nearly 120, most of whom are part of De Kattenberg, the ISB Dutch School. The Foundation for Dutch Education Abroad supports the initiative and the programme is regularly assessed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Throughout the year, students of all ages are engaged in a range of curricular and extra-curricular activities, including several field trips and the not-to-be-missed annual sintfeest celebration.

The ISB Dutch School project, of course, is not unique. It simply illustrates a simple point: learning gets better when schools look outside themselves and find like-minded individuals, organizations and companies who share their values. Certainly, in this case at least, the partnerships we built took us further than we could have gone on our own.

This article was first published in Newsweek in March 2008.

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