The International School of Geneva (in French: École internationale de Genève), commonly known as Ecolint, is a private, non-profit international school based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Founded in 1924 in the service of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization, it is the oldest international school in the world, and the largest one with 'international' in its name.[1][2][3] It was the result of a partnership between parents (Arthur Sweetser and Ludwik Rajchman) and educators from the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Adolphe Ferrière and Paul Meyhoffer).[4] In the mid-1960s, a group of teachers from Ecolint (La Grande Boissière campus) created the International Schools Examinations Syndicate (ISES), which later became the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) and then the International Baccalaureate (IB).[5] Since its inception, the school's mission was conceived as educating for peace and the inculcation of humanitarian values such as inclusiveness, respect and inter-cultural understanding. It describes itself in its website as "resolutely not-for-profit; mankind is the only beneficiary of our work, not corporate shareholders or private equity firms".[6] In 2017, it was labelled by ITN as "the most diverse school on the planet".[7]
Article 4 of Ecolint's Charter states that "the activity of the school in all fields and especially in the field of pedagogy shall be based on the principles of equality and solidarity among all peoples and of the equal value of all human beings without any distinction of nationality, race, sex, language or religion".[8]
Ecolint comprises three campuses in and around Geneva, each with its own principal (also known as "director") working under the Director General of the Foundation of the International School of Geneva and a Governing Board elected by parents, staff and alumni with members from the UN and Swiss Government.[9] Ecolint is a bilingual school, with instruction primarily in English and French. In addition to the IB, it is a testing centre for the US college boards (SAT and ACT) and the British IGCSE (CIE).[9]
The history of Ecolint has been charted in four volumes published in different decades. The first, bilingual one (Ecole Internationale de Genève – Son premier demi-siècle / International School of Geneva – the first 50 years, Geneva: 1974, 311 pages), edited by René Lejeune (better known as René-François Lejeune), compiles the contributions and eyewitness accounts of various authors, including the historian Robert J. Leach and Ecolint's second director, Marie-Thérèse Maurette. The second one (Ecolint – A portrait of the International School of Geneva, 1924–1999, Geneva: 1999, 218 pages) was written by the historian Michael Knight. The third volume (Marie-Thérèse Maurette – Pioneer of International Education, Geneva: 2009, 84 pages), which focuses specifically on the director who headed the school between 1929 and 1949, was authored by Professor George Walker, former Director General of Ecolint and of the International Baccalaureate Organization. The fourth and final volume to date (Ecolint – A History of the International School of Geneva, Geneva: 2014, 170 pages) is the joint work of educators Conan de Wilde (an alumnus of the school) and Othman Hamayed (a former director of La Grande Boissière's Secondary School).[11] In addition, Robert J. Leach[12][13][14][15] published privately in 1974 his own account of the school’s history, International School of Geneva, 1924–1974 (63 pages). Most recently, the geographer and economist Phil Thomas, who served as interim Director General and held a wide range of teaching positions in the school during his 35-year Ecolint career, published the booklet Ecolint and the Origins of the International Baccalaureate in 2018.[16] (These works constitute the source for some of the information provided below.)
From 1920 to 1921 the League of Nations and the International Labour Office established their headquarters in Geneva. In 1924 the International School of Geneva was founded by senior members of these two international organizations, most notably Arthur Sweetser[17][18] and Ludwik Rajchman,[19][20] in partnership with Adolphe Ferrière and Paul Meyhoffer, educators from Geneva's Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[9][21] Meyhoffer, originally trained as a theologian, had previously taught at Bedales School in England and, for eight years, at the Ecole Nouvelle de la Châtaigneraie (also known as Ecole Nouvelle du Léman), which in 1974 was integrated into Ecolint.[22]
Ferrière housed the first class in a chalet that was part of his family's estate, on the Route de Florissant in Geneva. He was also technical adviser to the school from 1924 to 1926. The nascent school was supported by William Rappard, Rector of the University of Geneva, the neurologist and child psychologist Édouard Claparède,[23] and Sir Arthur Salter, a senior official of the League of Nations. After occupying rented accommodation on the Rue Charles Bonnet in Geneva's Vieille ville (Old Town), the school finally acquired its own premises in 1929: a historic site known as La Grande Boissière.[24] The acquisition of this large property was made financially possible by Arthur Sweetser, who personally gave the school thousands of dollars and sought contributions from his network of affluent acquaintances. These donations included 25,000 U.S. dollars from John D. Rockefeller Jr.[25]
The school became a foundation in 1968, and continued to evolve as it acquired new campuses. In 1974 it incorporated as its second campus La Châtaigneraie (also called "La Chât"), which had originally been founded in 1908 as the Ecole Nouvelle La Châtaigneraie (later known as Collège Protestant Romand) near Founex in the Canton of Vaud.
The third campus, Campus des Nations, had two beginnings. The first was in the 1940s with Rigot, which subsequently became Pregny-Rigot, and the second in 2005 with the closure of Rigot and the opening of the purpose-made buildings at Saconnex. The Pregny-Rigot campus was a pre-Kindergarten through year 6 school that adopted the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program in 2002. This campus had two buildings, Rigot (an old Swiss farmhouse near the Place des Nations), and Pregny, a modern architectural structure, adjacent to the United Nations' premises and close to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2005, Pregny-Rigot shifted with the opening of a new building at Saconnex, near the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization. The early childhood classes at Rigot were moved to a renovated Pregny and Rigot was returned to the city of Geneva. Years 3–6 were moved from Pregny to the new building, Saconnex, which also opened a secondary school. The Secondary school offers the IB's Middle Years Programme, the IB Diploma and the IB Career-Related Programme (IBCP).
Languages offered
Ecolint offers its core curriculum in English and French to varying degrees, depending on the campus and section.
Ecolint offers additional modern languages such as Spanish, German, Italian and Mandarin as part of its curriculum. Arabic, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Norwegian, Swahili, Swedish and many other languages are available via private tuition but can be counted towards credits or as IB programmes; this route is often chosen by students who have little other opportunity formally to study their mother tongue.
Campuses
La Grande Boissière (also called "LGB") is the largest of the three campuses and has been a part of Ecolint since 1929. The primary school (beginning from age three) has approximately 550 students, and runs through grade 4. The middle school also has about 550 students, and runs from grade 5 to grade 8. The secondary school has around 800 students, beginning with 9th grade and going to grade 12 or 13. All three stages offer bilingual programmes.[26] (46°11′55″N6°10′21″E / 46.19861°N 6.17250°E / 46.19861; 6.17250)
La Châtaigneraie (also called "La Chât") became part of Ecolint in 1973 and is located in the Vaud countryside, near Founex, overlooking the Alps and Lake Léman. It has a primary and a secondary school, and has approximately 1600 students. Despite joining Ecolint after LGB, the oldest building on campus is the main secondary building which was completed in 1908, when La Châtaigneraie first opened, making it the oldest campus and longest-running educational establishment among the three. (46°20′23″N6°10′18″E / 46.33972°N 6.17167°E / 46.33972; 6.17167)
Campus des Nations (also simply called "Nations") opened in 2005 and operates on two locations in and in the vicinity of Grand Saconnex. It has around 1000 students. Campus des Nations is the only campus to offer all four IB programmes (PYP, MYP, IBDP and IBCP).
International School of Geneva's (upper) secondary education (middle and high school) is not listed as a Collège by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).[27] Nonetheless, education leading to the Maturité Fédérale (Federal Matura) is offered at the La Châtaigneraie campus, including the option to undertake the bilingual (English/French) Maturité.[28]
International
Ecolint's various programmes are accredited by the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the Middle States Association (MSA).[29][30] The last full accreditation was conducted in 2011, with an interim assessment in 2016.[citation needed]
Ecolint has satisfied the authorization procedures of the International Baccalaureate (IB) to offer the PYP, MYP, IBDP, and IBCP.[31]
Campus La Châtaigneraie is an approved Cambridge Assessment school, offering IGCSEs.
Governance
The Governing Board appoints the Director General to which the latter is accountable. All alumni, current parents, teachers and other employees may vote in the Governing Board elections and may be elected as members. Three seats are permanently reserved for members appointed by the Cantons of Geneva and Vaud, and by the United Nations. The school’s personnel are represented on the Board by three appointed or elected observers (one from each campus), and the Staff Association has the right to nominate for full membership someone who is not a current employee of the school.[8] Parents typically constitute a majority on the Governing Board.[32]Kofi Annan was a member of the Board from 1981 to 1983.[33] Ecolint’s governance was inspired by the direct democratic mechanisms of Switzerland. The Governing Board is accountable to all community members (parents, personnel and alumni) at the annual Consultative General Assembly and, when convened by members of the Ecolint community, at Extraordinary Consultative General Assemblies.[8] In February 2002, one of these assemblies, held at the United Nations, was attended by some 1,000 people.[34] It gave rise to a no-confidence referendum in June of that year involving all the school's eligible voters, the outcome of which forced the resignation of both the Governing Board’s Executive Committee and of the Director General.[35]
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations. (February 2021)
The Charter of the International School of Geneva gives all registered alumni the right to vote in the elections for the school's Governing Board, and to be elected as Governing Board members.[8]
Silvia Bunge – Professor of Psychology and Advanced Research Fellow, University of California Berkeley; Director, Building Blocks of Cognition Laboratory; daughter of philosopher Mario Bunge[49][50]
Gail Carpenter – Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Professor of Mathematics, Boston University; Director of the Cognitive and Neural Systems Technology Laboratory[51][52]
Dorland J. Davis – Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1964 to 1975.
Ratko Djukanovic – Medical researcher; Professor of Medicine, University of Southampton; Director of the Southampton NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit; Director of the NIHR Southampton Centre for Biomedical Research[53]
Harold Furth – Austrian-American physicist and former director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory[54]
Daniel Haber – Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Professor of Oncology at Harvard Medical School, investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Douglas Hofstadter – Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Director of the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition
Rami G. Khouri – Journalist, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award[51][69]
^Ecole Internationale de Genève – Son premier demi-siècle / International School of Geneva – the first 50 years, Geneva: 1974, 311 pages, edited by René-François Lejeune
^Elisabeth Fox (2001). "The Emergence of the International Baccalaureate as an Impetus to Curriculum Reform". In Mary Hayden; Jeff Thompson (eds.). International Education: Principles and Practice (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 141. ISBN9780749436162.
^Rodriguez-Giovo, Alejandro (Spring 2016). "A brief history of Ecolint histories"(PDF). Echo. No. 18. International School of Geneva. p. 8. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2021-01-10. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
^Rodriguez-Giovo, Alejandro (Autumn 2015). "The Noblest Ecolintian Of Them All"(PDF). Echo. International School of Geneva. p. 19. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2021-04-24. Retrieved 2020-07-03.
^René-François Lejeune (editor), Ecole Internationale de Genève – Son premier demi-siècle / International School of Geneva – the first 50 years, Geneva: 1974, page 14
^Othman Hamayed and Conan de Wilde, Ecolint – A History of the International School of Geneva, Geneva: 2014, ISBN978-2-8399-1196-2, page 25
^"La Grande Boissière". Ecolint | International School of Geneva. 2016-03-20. Retrieved 2019-05-08.
^"Maturität – Maturité – Maturità" (official site) (in German, French, and Italian). Berne, Switzerland: Swiss Federal State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, SERI. 1 March 2018. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
^ abcNot approved as Gymnasium (upper secondary education) by the bureau for gymnasial and vocational education MBA (Mittelschul- und Berufsbildungsamt MBA), administration for education (Erziehungsdirektion), canton of Berne
^Not approved neither as Volksschule (Kindergarten, primary and lower secondary education), nor as Mittelschule by the administration of education (Erziehungsdirektion), canton of Basel-Stadt
^Not approved as Mittelschule (upper secondary education) by the bureau for gymnasial education (Amt für Mittelschulen), department of education (Bildungsdepartement), canton of St. Gallen
^Not approved as Sekundarstufe II (upper secondary education) by the bureau for gymnasial and pedagogic education (Amt für Mittelschulen und Pädagogische Hochschule), administration for education (Bildungsdirektion), canton of Zug
^ abcdefNot approved as Mittelschule by the bureau for gymnasial and vocational education (Mittelschul- und Berufsbildungsamt), administration of education (Bildungsdirektion), canton of Zürich.
