Internationella Engelska Skolan is a bilingual Swedish school with an international profile, where each student is given the opportunity to achieve high academic expectations and aspirations and where teaching takes place in a safe and calm environment. The organisation was founded in 1993 with one school in central Stockholm – which meant IES celebrated its 30-year anniversary in the 2023/2024 academic year.
Our organisation has always believed in the same basic idea, that there must be a high level of quality in our education and that teachers must have high academic expectations for their students, regardless of the student’s starting point. One important factor here is creating a supportive, safe and dynamic environment that helps to generate a positive view of school and the learning experience.
In other words, it’s about “hard” and “soft” quality. IES follows a systematic approach to ensure quality and identify potential areas for improvement, including regular evaluation, action and follow-up. These areas are based on several different indicators including surveys, qualification for upper secondary school, national tests and admissions to higher education.
Structured follow-up
Throughout the entire organisation there is a strong desire to keep improving so as to fulfil our promise to parents and students. While it can be difficult to measure and compare the quality of different schools, one set of measurements that can be used is the national test results, as these tests are conducted by all schools in Sweden. This is why IES has focused on following up the results of these tests for many years. When measured over time, the results of IES’ students are approximately 15 per cent higher than the national average in the subjects of mathematics, Swedish and English. One of the primary goals for IES is for all students to qualify for further studies. In the 2023/2024 academic year, 81.3 per cent of all IES students who graduated from year nine passed all of their subjects. This figure was 71.9 per cent for the entire country including IES, which means that IES students help to raise the national average. Furthermore, 92.3 per cent of IES students qualified for upper secondary school, compared with 83.7 per cent for Sweden as a whole.
Strong and clear leadership
Strong local school leadership is an important parameter for a safe and orderly school environment. This is in turn essential to effective learning – in other words to achieving quality. IES is driven by its core values and recruits principals who live and lead according to these. Our principals ensure that IES’ core values are converted into actions and behaviours, every day.
This work is based on our Basic Defining Policy, which describes IES’ targets, expectations and ethical guidelines. The principal is responsible for ensuring that their school’s operations adhere to the policy. Each school also draws up school rules, in accordance with the Swedish Education Act. These rules are updated every year in consultation with the student council, and signed by students and parents. At the same time, teachers are expected to act as role models for how these should be put into practice.
Statistics from our annual anonymous survey of teachers, students and parents
Structured and continuous quality process
Our quality improvement work follows a carefully-structured, annual process. Every school sets goals and plans its operations for the upcoming academic year. In other words, while goals are set locally, they are agreed against the over-arching goals for IES as an organisation. These include results and environmental factors, i.e. the dimensions of quality defined by IES.
In April every year, students, parents and employees are surveyed to assess how well the organisation lives up to these goals. The questions are formulated per target group under the categories of academic environment, social environment (i.e. safety, support and a calm study environment) and the school environment. Parents and employees are also asked about how well the school’s leadership works.
The answers are evaluated during the summer by the organisation’s quality managers, i.e. IES’ education team, regional directors and the principal of each school. Any deviations versus the goals are identified, and an action plan is developed jointly with the relevant school at the beginning of the academic year. Data is compiled in a report that every school works with during the entire academic year.
Recent years have testified to the significance of the social component of our operations. During the pandemic, when physical meetings with parents decreased and activities for students outside of teaching hours were suspended, students’ and parents’ perception of quality and their engagement with the school decreased. In other words, it was a clear indication of how important it is for us to stay in close contact with parents and to link academic work with student care, the foundation of our organisation ever since the beginning.
We still notice the effects of the pandemic period, for instance it is difficult to get parents to return to physical meetings at the schools. Therefore we are looking into various activities to create engagement and to invite parents and others into our schools.
A tougher social climate has made many parents and children feel less safe, as shown in our surveys. To address this, we are constantly adapting our quality work to keep pace with societal developments. A key part is providing all of our employees with the tools to continue to support students and create a safe school environment. This work includes ongoing training as well as knowledge sharing and experience exchange between schools.
Great integrity in grading
Integrity in grading is a major priority for IES’ systematic quality work. Every year, the grading within each school is evaluated, compared and analysed using IES’ statistics database. Any deviations in grades compared to the results in the national tests, as well as any deviations compared to the IES average and municipal and national averages, are examined to ensure that the teachers grade correctly. IES’ quality improvement system can monitor several different areas, including per student, school, year and subject, and it allows comparisons over time.
Every teacher has been granted the authority to set grades and IES supports them in this by providing the right conditions for teachers to make fair assessments.
To help teachers and ensure grades are set fairly, we have set up an internal moderation process between subject teachers in our schools, in which the subject teachers compare student work before setting grades, so as to create conditions that facilitate fair grading. In addition, specific heads of department are tasked with coordinating the quality of teaching and grading between the schools. Further training in this area is also held for the schools’ academic managers.
IES teachers that have a foreign teaching degree receive specific support for grading from a teacher with a Swedish teaching degree in that subject. The heads of departments and academic managers in each school are responsible for ensuring that new teachers from other countries quickly gain an understanding of the Swedish system of grading and the Swedish national curriculum.
In several places around the country, IES has also started to collaborate with municipal schools to compare grading and learn from each other. Results in the national tests also serve as a guideline for grading and are specifically taken into account when teachers give grades.
The updated national curriculum that was introduced in autumn 2022 – LGR22 – contains fewer value-related words in the grading criteria. It is believed that this should make grading easier in the future, and also allow teachers to focus more on student learning and on teaching situations.
National tests
IES closely monitors each student’s national test results. This is an important part of our quality improvement work, and ensures that students develop the knowledge and skills they need for the future.
For the third year in a row, national statistics for the results of the year nine national tests (2023/2024) showed a higher level of consistency between IES students’ results in these tests and their final grades in Swedish, Swedish as second language, mathematics and English when compared with the entire country. We see this as proof that the continuous efforts made by our teachers, principals and academic managers to ensure accurate and fair grading are having an impact.
The national tests are an important instrument for assessing students’ knowledge and for ensuring accurate and fair grading. For that reason, IES has advocated for central grading of national tests for many years, and we are now delighted that the Government intends to accelerate this transition. Until it is introduced, we will continue to implement systematic cooperation between our IES schools on moderation of the national tests.
In subjects for which there is no national test, such as technology, crafts, art, music and home economics, each school submits its preliminary grades to Huvudman one month prior to grading. The purpose of this is to see the distribution of the grades and identify any deviations. If deviations are noticed, the relevant school is asked to further analyse the situation.
Value added
An objective measure of school quality is needed to address low levels of knowledge and to identify which kinds of teaching work well. We believe that the value-added metric is good place to start. The value-added metric aims to measure how much of the change in students’ performance that can be attributed to the school. The score is calculated by comparing the results of the national tests in year six and year nine in the three core subjects of English, mathematics and Swedish. To ensure that the value-added score captures the quality of the school, the calculations also take background variables into account, including the country of birth of the students and their parents and the parents’ level of income and education. Value added scores are based on student-level data from Statistics Sweden (SCB) for all students registered to take the national tests.
If the difference is positive and is larger than in other schools, it indicates that the school has contributed positively to the student’s progress during their schooling. In countries such as Norway, England and the US the value added is measured systematically as part of the school system.* In 2020, independent researchers Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren and Henrik Jordal carried out an analysis of value added, based on the results of the 2019 national tests.** The report indicated higher value-added scores for IES than for the country’s other independent and municipal schools in English and mathematics, while the difference in Swedish was less clear. Further to comments from other researchers, the researchers have chosen to modify their calculation model for the value-added score from the 2019/2020 academic year report onwards. This has meant a change to all the value-added calculations that they produce regarding education in Sweden, making comparisons over time slightly more difficult. The new model gives a more holistic view that takes into account how the core subjects interrelate and affect one another, and the results the students achieve. The results suggest that IES’ value-added scores are still positive in English and mathematics, but remain within the same margin of error for Swedish when compared with other school operators.
The value-added metric obviously needs to be supplemented with other measurements of the school’s operations, such as enjoyment and the school’s role in upbringing, and elements that develop the students’ social skills, confidence and faith in the future, which are also important aspects of the task of schooling. Just as it does today, our future systematic quality work needs to encompass regular surveys of students, parents and school staff.
Enhancing quality through school visits
We carry out regular quality visits to all our schools. During these visits, the organisation’s head of education, head of academics, and head of pastoral interview a school’s teachers, principals, and academic managers. They also attend lessons, after which they share their observations with the principal. These observations are followed up continuously as part of our systematic quality work, and as a way to identify best practice and areas for improvement.
Complaints
IES is keen to develop close and trustworthy collaboration with parents, for the good of the children and their education. If students or their guardians have a complaint, they are encouraged to contact the student’s mentor who will document the complaint and start an investigation if needed. The mentor may also forward the complaint to the head of year, the head of department, academic manager or another member of staff. If the complaint concerns an employee it will be sent immediately to the principal or assistant principal.
If no acceptable solution can be reached within the school, the complaint can be forwarded to the organisation that operates the school, Internationella Engelska Skolan i Sverige AB. Guardians can also contact the school operator directly via a form on the IES website.
Fulfilling students’ different needs
IES helps all students reach their full potential, which is a crucial factor for them to achieve good results. In practice it means the school must help students who need support, while also ensuring that high-performing students are sufficiently stimulated and challenged, and we never give up on any student. As a role model, the school has to show as much ‘grit’ – determination and a burning desire to see things through – as is expected of the students.
Students perform diagnostic tests in Swedish and mathematics in years four and six to identify those who need extra support or those who need more of a challenge. Since IES started in 1993 it has offered homework support on top of regular lessons so that students can study a subject in more detail, receive more challenging work or get help. Those schools that have a large proportion of students with a weaker socio-economic background often stay open longer in the afternoons to offer students a calm place to do their homework. They also serve breakfast to ensure that the students get a good start to the day.
By motivating every single student to do their best and by having high expectations of all students, IES achieves better results for students from all types of backgrounds. As an example, 86 per cent of IES students whose parents have no post-secondary education qualified to study at upper secondary school (see graphs on page 17). This compares with the national average of 76 per cent (figures refer to the 2023/2024 academic year).
Increased focus on student health
Statistics show that a growing number of children and young people suffer from poor health. To help buck that trend, IES has intensified its efforts in the area of health with actions aimed at promoting students’ learning, development and health and preventing poor health. This is the responsibility of the student health team consisting of school nurses, school doctors, school psychologists, counsellors, and career guidance counsellors. The team has both a preventative and a responsive role which includes medical, psychological, psychosocial and special education activities. They collaborate with other school staff and also with external parties such as social services. All their work is subject to professional confidentiality.
One of the focus areas is in student obesity and overweight students. The number of children and young people who are overweight or obese has increased drastically over recent decades, which has increased their risk of developing associated chronic illnesses and mental health issues. If measures are taken early on, the trajectory can be changed which makes the role of school nurses a very important one. It is, however, a sensitive and difficult subject to broach. To make this easier, IES has created support materials and a model for health-related conversations held with students.
Introducing students to physical activities is an important element in promoting their health and well-being. As part of this, IES has initiated the “#movewithIES” health initiative aimed at enabling our schools to provide meaningful and stimulating activities during breaks and leisure time. The initiative has been running since 2021, and the ultimate goal is to create and establish healthy habits that our students will keep for the rest of their lives. More and more schools are joining the initiative, and it will be taken on by the IES central student health team in the 2024/2025 academic year so that all schools can be included in the future.
School food is another aspect of student health. Good food leads to a calmer school atmosphere and better conditions for learning. For that reason, IES’ focus on quality also encompasses the meals served in our schools. A school meal policy was introduced during the year. Its purpose is to ensure that IES’ school meals provide the nutritional content required by the Swedish Food Agency’s (Livsmedelsverket) national guidelines for school meals. The policy also ensures a high level of quality and variety in school meals, and that the food is tasty, sustainable and safe.
Prioritising safety
Providing safety is also important to achieving good academic results. All schools adhere to the Plan Against Abusive Treatment. This describes how the school actively and purposefully works to prevent all forms of abusive treatment. Physical safety around the school is another priority, including the traffic situation and any potential threats from external visitors. IES applies a “closed-campus” policy which means all students remain within the school during school hours and all visitors must register at a manned reception.
IES’ activities to improve student health, safety and the physical working environment are governed by the document Checklist for Health and Safety, and each school’s principal is responsible for implementing and following up this work. The results of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s (Skolinspektionen) evaluations also provide input to these efforts. The schools’ academic managers help teachers to identify students who need extra resources or otherwise need to be given more attention, while the student health coordinator ensures that other educational resources are made available.
IES adheres to the Swedish Education Act, including chapter six, and complies with the obligation each school has to notify, investigate and act around abusive treatment. In addition, the principals of each school develop a more detailed plan for how bullying must be prevented and dealt with. These procedures are documented in each school’s Plan Against Abusive Treatment, and are then followed up via the annual survey in which students are asked whether they feel safe in the school.