International or Internationalised? Exploring issues faced by international schools in local markets: a Cyprus case study

Abstract

The growing popularity and diversity of international schools worldwide has resulted in the identification of several typologies of such schools based on different factors of significance. The largest growth in numbers of international schools is now occurring in local markets, with many having a large number of host-country students and to some extent incorporating both national and international curriculum and customs. In this article we discuss the institutional and social issues that may be faced by such schools in terms of their curriculum and their identity, as well as socio-linguistic aspects. We discuss the global and local perspectives that drive and challenge the internationalisation of these schools, with a focus in particular on the context of Cyprus.

Keywords

International school internationalised school international mindedness international education

Introduction

International schools continue to grow in number worldwide, and the changing market of such schools leads to ongoing scholarly debate in attempts to establish their definition and typology. Hill (2015: 66) presents the historical definition of international school established in the 1960s by Leach and the International Schools Association (ISA) as a school with a culturally diverse, internationally mobile student and governing body, that is not controlled by any particular national group or government, that operates on a not-for-profit basis, and offers education which provides students with an international perspective. Hill points out that, at the time of writing, this ‘definition would only be applicable to a small number of schools which are now regarded as ‘international’ (2015: 66). Bunnell (2019: 1) argues that international schooling has reached a ‘new era’, with many schools calling themselves international without having a rationale for that description.

In recent years, the growth of the international school sector has been unprecedented. ISC Research, the main provider of international school market intelligence, reported in 2022 that within the previous ten years the number of international schools grew by 59%, the number of students grew by 54%, and the fee income grew by an astonishing 96% (ISC, 2022). The greatest expansion of international schools is now occurring in local markets, providing internationally recognised qualifications largely to local students who aspire to enter universities internationally (Brummitt and Keeling, 2013; Bunnell, 2021). Such education is often seen by local parents as equipping their children with an advantage of economic and cultural capital (see, for instance, Brummitt and Keeling, 2013; Bunnell et al, 2016; Levenson and Resnik, 2021).

International schools catering largely for local students have been described by Hayden and Thompson (2013) as Type C non-traditional international schools, though some authors in the field question the extent to which some of these schools can actually qualify as international (see Hill, 2016; Bunnell et al, 2016; Poole, 2020). For example Poole (2020), in pointing out that not all Type C schools are the same, refers to a distinct body of what he describes as ‘Chinese Internationalised Schools’: for-profit Type C international schools in China that are characterised by having a mainly local student body, providing both international and national curricula, and including Chinese symbolic routines. He suggests that such schools could be better conceptualised as ‘internationalised’ rather than ‘international’.

In our article we focus on international schools in Cyprus that present similar characteristics to those described by Poole (2020): schools with mainly Greek-Cypriot student and governing bodies, that incorporate national and international curricula and observe Greek-Cypriot national celebrations. Based on experiences shared by headteachers, teachers and students, we consider ways in which such characteristics can affect a school and its community. We discuss whether the schools presented here should also be conceptualised as ‘internationalised’; not only due to their predominant characteristics, but also due to the effects that these characteristics have on their lived identity and international outlook.

Literature Review

The first attempt to define and categorise international schools is generally agreed to have been in the 1960s by Leach, who distinguished four categories of international school: private national schools within the home country that promote international education to native students; national schools established overseas to offer national education to the country’s expatriates; schools established as a result of bilateral or multilateral agreements between governments such as French-German schools; and ‘genuine international schools’ which did or could adhere to the International Schools Association (ISA) membership criteria (Leach, 1969: 7-10). ‘Genuine international schools’ were those controlled by neither ‘government nor national grouping’ where no preference was given to any social, religious or ideological group, and which provided education that enables ‘young people to be at home in the world anywhere’ (Leach, 1969: 10). Diversity within the field of international schools was already visible from the 1960s; however, up to the 1990s and with the number of international schools limited to around 500–1,000 (Bunnell, 2021: 2), ‘the arena of “international schools” played an intended ideological and pragmatic role, albeit in a rather discrete and peripheral manner which in practice facilitated an exclusive schooling experience for a limited and already privileged transnational elite clientele’ (Bunnell, 2021: 1).

Especially in the last twenty years, the international school sector has changed significantly in terms of the number of such schools but also their diversity. Bunnell (2014) described this transformation as moving from an ‘ideal epoch’ to a ‘post-ideal epoch’ of international schools, with the ‘post-ideal epoch’ characterised by the increasing numbers of such schools being established as ‘for-profit’ organisations whose students are largely from local affluent and middle-class families, aiming to experience English-medium education and obtain qualifications that will allow them to enter universities in the UK or USA. Thus it is argued that the market of international schools has shifted away from conceptually motivated schools that serve the expatriate community, towards profit-oriented schools that cater mostly for local students (Brummitt and Keeling, 2013; Bunnell, 2021): an observation corroborated by several researchers through case studies from Asia (Ng, 2012; Levenson and Resnik, 2021; Kim, 2019; Wright and Lee, 2019; Poole, 2020) and the Middle East (Ezra, 2007; Reid and Ibrahim, 2017; Alfaraidy, 2020).

These changes in the international school sector led to revised definitions and typologies (see, for instance, Cambridge and Thompson, 2004; Bunnell, 2014, 2019; Hayden and Thompson, 2013; Hill, 2016), with the most established and widely cited being the ABC classification proposed by Hayden and Thompson (2013). In this typology, Type A are traditional international schools set up to cater for the children of globally mobile professionals: such schools were in the majority up until the 1990s. Type B international schools were established to promote a particular ideology relating to the mission and principles of international education, while Type-C ‘non-traditional’ international schools are established principally to cater for ‘host country national’ students rather than expatriates. However, the Type C category of international schools is rather broad and there are arguably several variants of international schools within this category such as state schools that provide some form of international programme, or commercially-driven English-medium or American schools (Poole, 2020).

Moreover, in recent years the definition of international schools has become broader. ISC Research considers schools to be international if they deliver ‘a curriculum to any combination of pre-school, primary or secondary students, wholly or partly in English outside an English-speaking country’ or if they ‘offer an English-medium curriculum other than the country’s national curriculum and are international in their orientation, if based in a country where English is one of the official languages’ (ISC, 2022). Bunnell (2019: 1) refers to Globalised English Medium of Instruction Schools (GEMIS) as ‘schools with a global outlook located mainly outside an English-speaking country delivering a non-national curriculum at least partly in English’. It is worth noting that these definitions do not reference the composition of the student body or the governing body, nor are they overly explicit about the use of an international curriculum such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP) or Diploma Programme (DP). The reference to ‘non-national’ curriculum allows overseas schools that follow for instance the British curriculum and offer International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and A-level to be considered international schools.

Hill (2015, 2016) aimed to classify international schools based on their level of ‘internationalisation’. He created a framework which provided specific scales with regards to the educational programme (scale 0-5), composition of student population (0-4), cultural diversity of the governing body (0-4), and level of student tuition fees (0-3). In each category, Hill uses ‘zero’ as a descriptor of a purely national school, with the highest level of each scale representing what should be a characteristic of a fully international school. At that level, Hill places schools that ‘have a recognised international education programme in a school established to educate the children of families living abroad’ (p 16), where ‘host country nationals are 0% of the total student body’ or at least no more than 25%; no more than 10% of the governing body are nationals of the school’s host country (p 17); and where full tuition fees apply (p 18), based on a rationale that a lack of such fees is consistent with national schools as opposed to private schools. Hill’s framework does not come without issues. For example, in terms of the curriculum, he includes schools that use the ‘national programme of the ministry of the country where the school is located together with a recognised international education programme – students choose’, which he places at level 2 out of 5; and schools that provide ‘a recognised international education programme in a school to educate local children of the nation where the school is located’, which he places at level 3 out of 5. Hill does not account for schools that teach a recognised international education programme with some elements of a national programme. Following Hill’s logic, we suggest that such schools would fall somewhere in the middle of this scale, between 2 and 3. Nonetheless, Hill’s framework can be used as a starting point for comparisons between different international schools.

In a recent article referring to a distinct body of ‘Chinese Internationalised Schools’, Poole (2020) describes international schools that follow an international curriculum such as the IBDP or alternatively an English-medium curriculum (such as IGCSE or A-level). They have a mainly local student body, observe Chinese symbolic routines, and offer to some extent the Chinese national curriculum, usually in the middle school. In terms of language of instruction, such schools are largely bilingual, typically including English as well as Putonghua (or Mandarin), the national language of China. The teaching body consists of both expatriates and local teachers; however, the governing body is Chinese. The author suggests that these schools could be better conceptualised as ‘internationalised’ rather than ‘international’. All these frameworks categorise international schools according to external criteria (such as curriculum, or population) but do not consider the effects that these characteristics have on international schools.

Poole (2018) describes ‘school identity’ on three levels: the rhetorical, the curricular, and the lived. The rhetorical identity refers to the school’s institutional identity ‘articulated in school publicity material’ (p 109). It illustrates how a school wants to project itself to the wider public. The curricular identity refers to the programmes of study. The lived identity, meanwhile, is explored from ‘the point of view of grass roots actors’ (p 113); it depicts how a school is being perceived by its own members. In the schools he researched, Poole (2018) observed a dissonance between these three identities. The schools’ rhetorical identity, as suggested by their publicity material, was international. Their curricular identity was also international. However, the teachers who participated in Poole’s study perceived the schools’ lived identity as Chinese. The importance of perceptions of the school community should not be underestimated. Allen (2002: 129) notes that ‘schools are communities, schools exist within communities, schools serve communities, schools form communities, and schools interact with communities’. Allan (2002) suggested that an international school can be influenced by the culture of the majority, which could be the host-country culture, or other dominant culture within the school. Jabal (2013), who researched institutional identity and school-community in two international schools in Hong Kong, used Thomas’ (2002) concept of ‘institutional habitus’ which, according to Jabal (2013: 7), ‘reveals how each school’s habitus projects, “normalizes” and engenders particular knowledge and experiences within its 4Cs [curriculum, co-curriculum, culture and community] and why the dominant social groups therein determine (and control) interactions’.

In our study, beyond establishing common characteristics in terms of the curriculum, the composition and diversity of the school population (students and teachers), and the governing body, we have tried to understand how these characteristics influence international schools in one context at the level of the school community in regards to issues such as language, students’ integration, school identity, as well as global and local perspectives that drive and challenge the schools’ internationalisation. Furthermore, we explore in this context the experiences of international students who are the minority among a mostly local student and teacher population.

Research Context and Method

The context of the study described here is Cyprus, where private schools are approved and licensed on an individual basis by the Cyprus Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports (MOEC). Their establishment and operation are governed by the Law on Private Schools and Private Tuition Schools, and they are categorised as ‘similar type’ and ‘different type’ based on their prevailing features (MOEC, 2022). ‘Similar type’ English-medium schools have higher frequencies of Greek-Cypriot students and lower frequencies of international students compared to the ‘different type’ English-medium schools with highly multinational student populations. The three schools that are the focus of this study are all registered as ‘similar-type’. Based on the ISC Research (2022) definition, all should be considered as international schools. The three schools (referred to here as schools A, B, and C) offer courses and are examination centres of one or more IGCSE and GCE A Level providers such as Cambridge or Edexcel; additionally, two of the schools offer the IBDP. Therefore, they deliver: ‘a curriculum to any combination of pre-school, primary or secondary students, wholly or partly in English outside an English-speaking country’ (ISC, 2022). All three schools also offer students the ‘Apolytirion’ (Cyprus’ Secondary School Leaving Certificate) and are characterised by a large population of local teachers and students, as well as local ownership (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Characteristics of the researched schools.

	School A	School B	School C
Student population	Very high Cypriot Small, diverse international population	Very high Cypriot Small, diverse international population	Two-third Cypriot and one-third diverse international population
Ownership	Cypriot	Cypriot	Cypriot
Management	Cypriot headteacher and British deputy	Cypriot headteacher and British deputy	Cypriot headteacher
MOEC category	Similar	Similar	Similar
Primary/ Secondary school	Primary and Secondary	Secondary	Secondary
Curriculum	Greek-Cypriot IGCSE A-level	Greek-Cypriot IGCSE A-level IBDP	Greek-Cypriot IGCSE A-level IBDP

In total, 103 secondary school students, 43 teachers and three deputy/headteachers from the three schools took part in this study. In terms of students, 45 participants had one or two Greek-Cypriot parents, and in this article we will refer to these students as Cypriots. The remaining 58 students came from different countries in Asia and Europe; we will refer to these students as international. 39 of the teacher participants were Greek-Cypriots (in this article we will refer to them as Cypriots), and 4 teachers were international. The participants were teachers of a variety of subjects in STEM, Languages and Humanities. 79.1% of teachers held a Master’s degree, and 64.3% had studied in the UK. Finally, one management team member from each of the participating schools took part in the study. Two deputy headteachers from schools A and B were British, and the headteacher from school C was Cypriot. All, alongside their management responsibilities, were also active subject teachers: 2 science, 1 English. In this article we will refer to them as headteacher A, B, and C.

The research was implemented according to mixed-methods convergent parallel design (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2011). We implemented both strands in concurrent timing in one phase of the research process. We addressed ethical issues including confidentiality, informed consent, data access and ownership. The schools were well-informed about all aspects of the research. All data were collected on an anonymous and voluntary basis. Only students who themselves agreed to participate and whose parents gave permission to the researcher or to the school were involved in the study.

The teacher questionnaire related to teaching, learning practices and relevant observations and perceptions of students and school in relation to global outlook and intercultural understanding. The student questionnaire focused on individual perceptions and experiences within the school such as integration with other students. The collected data was entered into IBM SPSS for Windows, version 25 and we conducted descriptive statistical analyses. Concurrently, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the three headteachers. The interviews focused on policies, practices and issues related to intercultural understanding, language education, global education, relations with the host society, globalist and international mission of international schools, as well as the challenges that the school might be facing in any of these areas. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Each interviewee received a transcript and was given an opportunity to review, clarify or expand on their initial statements. We then proceeded with thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke (2006). We continuously inspected the data throughout the analysis to ensure rigour and consistency.

After completing separate analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data strands, we followed Creswell and Plano Clark (2011) to mix the two data sets, starting with a side-by-side presentation of the qualitative and quantitative strands followed by triangulation of the different data sets and evaluation within each of the major themes of this study. This also helped to offset issues of the participants wanting to portray themselves or their institutions in a favourable light by giving socially desirable answers or answers which do not represent the reality.

Findings

Findings are discussed below according to the main issues that arose from analysis of both questionnaires and interviews.

The Issue of the curriculum

Although the English-medium curriculum is the dominant curriculum being registered as ‘similar type’, the schools are required by the Ministry to include some courses covered in Greek-Cypriot state schools such as classical studies, religious instruction, extensive modern Greek language, and elements of Cyprus history. Usually, these subjects are only taught to Cypriots. Generally, international students study Greek as a second language. Schools thus combine international and local curriculum variants. However, as Poole (2016) observed in the context of Chinese internationalised schools, national and international curricula rather than being ‘integrated’ are more likely to be introduced in a parallel manner. This also seems to be the case for the schools in our study. The international and Greek-Cypriot curricula are mostly taught separately, with the latter taught primarily to the Cypriot students.

As explained by headteacher B, the non-national (IGCSE, GCE or IBDP) curricula are ‘followed for the purpose of the external examinations and the Greek-related subjects must be included for students to be able to obtain the Apolytirion’. Headteacher B added that ‘the establishment of very good relationships with [UK] universities allows 65-70% of our students to get a placement based on their Apolytirions only’. Thus, both the international and the local curriculum are considered commodities that can lead to the ultimate goal of a university placement abroad, which would suggest a prevalence of the global approach over the international approach (Cambridge and Thompson, 2004). The pressure of university placements was also emphasised by headteacher A who commented on the importance of this issue in relation to the school’s survival:

To be successful with academic results; it is very much promoted because otherwise we lose children to [the international schools in the nearest urban area] and we do not want this to happen . . . One of our big jobs is to convince parents to come here.

This kind of competitiveness is a well-known phenomenon that is not only limited to the secondary school level. A comparative study conducted by Hameed (2020) of global citizenship education in two primary schools: an international school in in Singapore and an independent school in Australia, showed that schools were very aware and cautious about their local ‘clientele’ in their efforts to remain competitive in their respective educational local markets. Our study showed that these findings are very much applicable to the schools in our research.

The issue of language

Many students in the researched schools speak two or more languages at home, while in school they study English, Greek and an additional language. However, for the Cypriot students, English is often only a language of academic instruction, with the Greek language being the language of communication. Many were not as likely to speak English with the international group of students (58.3%). At the same time, international students learn Greek as a foreign language, but as headteacher A explained, international students who join the school in upper classes are less likely to learn Greek, and: ‘whether students will learn Greek in the primary school seems to make a lot of difference’ as it has a major impact on the quality of their social life in school. Headteacher B explained it further:

When the Russian students first came, they grouped together and spoke Russian with each other as their English language skills were low. But as they learned the English language and also picked up the Greek language, they started to interact with other students.

The results showed that the native language of the majority (Greek) is used extensively by Cypriot students and teachers during lessons and breaktime. These circumstances do not support the international students. They face difficulties when trying to learn and socialise in English. This issue was pointed out by international students across all three schools. Their comments on feeling respected or disrespected in their schools often mentioned the extensive use of the Greek language by students and teachers. An example is illustrated in the following comment from a school C student: ‘In the majority of classes teachers speak Greek with barely any English, as well as have private conversations with the Greek students’. In fact, some students wrote that what makes them feel respected in the school is that teachers and students speak English when around them. One school A student commented: ‘People respect the fact that I don’t speak Greek very well and take it into consideration when I am around, translating etc.’ Headteacher B recognised this matter:

We encourage both Cypriots and Russians to try to interact with each other. We explain to them that speaking in their own language when others do not understand is first of all impolite, and secondly, it prevents them from interacting and making new friends.

However, this issue is not only evident on a student-student level, but also on a student-teacher level. A situation was described by a school B student who was Ukrainian and did understand Greek, but needed a relatively small amount of help language-wise:

We were learning science, and I did not know a word. I asked [the teacher] in English the meaning and he explained it to me in Greek. I told him that I don’t understand and he said: ‘What language do you want me to speak, Chinese?’

This student seems to accept the fact that the teacher is teaching science in Greek but did not appreciate being insulted for making an effort to follow it. The teacher’s comment suggests not only that some teachers did not see an issue with teaching lessons only in Greek, but also that there are further cultural–cognitive implications. All three headteachers acknowledged that the Greek language is being used by students and teachers during lessons, and found it problematic. Headteacher C explained:

I actually had an issue this morning with a maths teacher because I got an email from a parent saying that in class the teacher, they feel, speaks more Greek than English. I [explained] to [the teacher] politely, but firmly, that she must change that. It is something we are working towards and we are very honest about it.

Studies in international schools conducted by Sears (2015) and Lehman (2020) found that parents prefer for all classes to take place only in English as the international school is often the only place where children are exposed to the English language. However, as headteacher A observed, due to the newly-arrived Cypriot students’ low English language skills, using a combination of Greek and English in lessons is often a necessity. There are clearly challenges and benefits of being able to use the host-country language, including the benefit of having the ability to explain more complex ideas in the native language to improve students’ understanding of it, and the challenge of limited intercultural interactions (Poole, 2020).

However, our results also showed that international students need to learn Greek not only to socialise and integrate better with their Cypriot peers, but also to cope in some of the lessons that at least partly take place in Greek. This is contradictory to some studies in international schools. For example, Sukamto et al (2021) described a different situation in an international school in Jakarta where local students needed to learn the English language to be able to participate in lessons, and to communicate and socialise with friends in school. In our study we observed that the social dimension of the use of the Greek language affects the cultural–cognitive pillar of the researched schools (Bunnell et al, 2016).

The issue of integration

Hill (2016: 17) makes a point that in ‘a truly international school, the notion of “foreignness” does not exist’. However, in the schools researched in this study, nationality seems to be a factor in students’ adaptation process and the headteachers and teachers referred to the adaptation of international students, as opposed to all students. Headteacher A admitted that there is a clear divide between the international, mostly British, school community, and the Cypriot school community, and that some students do not ever integrate: ‘Given the choice, the British students always sat together, they stood around the playground together . . . Even some who are very good Greek speakers found it very difficult to integrate. I think it is an issue of both sides’. She also observed that students with only one Cypriot parent are more internationally-inclined and tend to gravitate towards the school’s international community across the age groups. Moreover, Cypriot students who attend the school's junior school integrate well with the international population, she reported, because ‘they are all good English speakers and English is their common language’. Cypriot students with low English language skills who joined the school at a secondary level, however, are not keen to integrate outside of their native peer group. This situation not only has an effect on the integration of the whole school community, she observed, but predominantly affects the international population of the school, and their experience of schooling: ‘We have a Danish family: two girls. The younger one is in the junior school and is totally integrated. The older one, who came to year 4 and is now in year 6, is integrated as far as her subjects are concerned’.

Integration issues were also prominent in students’ responses. International students commented on the ‘international-Cypriot’ split in the school, noting that the native students do not want to go out of their own circle. As one school C student recalled:

People in my class prefer to spend their time with people who have the same nationality as them (Cypriots with Cypriots and multicultural students together). I told my parents but we know we cannot do anything to change that.

International students also included accounts of being disrespected by Cypriot teachers because of their cultural background. Another student from school C wrote: ‘I got kicked out of the parade; the teacher said I am not marching the right way. [But] Cypriot students did not march the right way either’. Here, an international student presents his perspective on fruitless efforts to get involved in a Greek-Cypriot national event which, in his opinion, was not appreciated by the teacher. Furthermore, we observed dissonance between students and teachers about what they consider appropriate intercultural teaching and learning. Discussing international students’ native backgrounds in class was described by many teachers as a positive strategy towards integration, expressed through examples such as one given by a teacher from school A: ‘Asking questions regarding their culture to make them feel welcome’. Research shows that in international schools students should be given opportunities to discuss their native cultures and backgrounds and to grow and explore their identities (Barratt Hacking et al, 2018; Wilkinson and Hayden, 2010). However, this teaching strategy can backfire if it leaves students feeling exposed and uncomfortable. Some students commented that they did not appreciate teachers asking in class about their religious beliefs, which is evident in the following student comment from school A: ‘It was the whole class and I was new so she asked me questions about my religion, trying to put me in a bad light and to make others laugh’. Here, the student felt that the enquiry was mean-spirited, and felt offended at the end of the process. Students also mentioned that they feel some teachers may have certain prejudice towards them due to the students’ native background. One student from school A reported that: ‘A teacher disliked me and another person with the same religion and nationality’. Such comments were only made by the international students. Overall, various situations were presented separately by students of different schools and different year groups. The Cypriot students remained noticeably non-responsive to questions that related to these issues. Interestingly, a similar ‘us and them’ divide was described in Jabal’s (2013) study in an international school in Hong Kong. There, however, it was the Anglo/European minority and institutional identities and practices that dominated and perpetuated the unequal power dynamics within the school. This would suggest that it is not so much the predominant school population that drives the school inclination towards a more local or international spectrum, but rather its chosen ‘institutional habitus’ (Thomas, 2002).

In schools where host-country majority and international-minority groups are clearly visible, and most students enter the school at secondary level, integration of international and Cypriot populations would seem to require work on the part of the school. The extent to which integration is successful depends on the commitment of the school. Headteacher C integrates students in clubs and schoolhouses, and in subjects where there is no need for separation based on the Greek language or Religious Studies. Moreover in school C, Cypriots whose English language is at a good level are placed together with the international population: ‘We do not have a group of foreigners only’. Headteacher A observed that mixed tutor groups work best, though organising these is difficult due to timetabling issues. School A places children who take Greek as a second language in one group, which by default segregates them from the Cypriots, who take the native speakers’ course.

Teachers also commented on challenges that relate to teaching skills and behaviours such as ‘overcoming the mindset of certain students that focus on stereotypes due to external influence’ as pointed out by a teacher from school B, and the challenge of ‘teaching [students] to be respectful and work effectively together’ as explained by a teacher from school C. Another teacher from school B noted ‘Students should be able to distinguish a person’s character from his/her culture and/or ties to many of the social developments of globalization’. However, in order to do so, as noted by another teacher from school A, significance needs to be placed on the importance of ‘informing students correctly about different cultures’ because ‘although generally students are quite accepting of others from different cultures, most of our students are not knowledgeable in terms of other cultures different from their own’.

The issue of school identity

The ‘student-as-context’ approach focuses on students’ relationships with and experiences within the school community, school actors, administration, structures, curriculum, pedagogy, and opportunities (Jabal, 2013). Students were asked how they perceive their school’s identity. Asked to characterise their school as English, Cypriot, or international, 56% of students across all researched schools identified their school as Cypriot, and only 31% as international. Most of the teachers also thought of their schools as Cypriot (75.6%), with only 24.4% considering them to be international. One of the school A teachers observed that ‘Since the school is largely made up of Greek-Cypriot students, religious and ethnic events are all celebrated within the school and our culture and religion are promoted’, while a teacher from school C commented on a number of events where the Cypriot identity of the school is being reinforced: ‘morning prayer, national holidays and celebrations are followed and conducted. Also, parades for independence’. Moreover, headteachers also referred to their schools’ identities as Cypriot, with headteacher A stating that ‘the culture is very much reflective of the culture of the [Cypriot] community’, and headteacher B noting that ‘being a majority Cypriot school, we are part of the host society, we represent the community’. As Poore (2005: 351) observed: ‘Through experiencing their school ethos, students come to know the school culture, which provides the framework from which we [teachers and administrators] and our students make sense of the life and world around us’. For schools such as those in Cyprus which are registered as ‘similar’ there are several ministry requirements that emphasise and reinforce the Greek-Cypriot identity. The schools participate in parades which are an important part of state holidays in Cyprus; state holidays that often relate to the issue of the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation. In this sense, students engage in socio-political action based on their national identity (Elerian and Solomou, 2022). Taking an international outlook can be a challenge for schools where certain national, traditional and cultural values may be in opposition to universal ideas on which international education is constructed (Resnik, 2012; Cause, 2012).

Some studies show that finding cultural identity can be problematic for local students enrolled in international schools because of the dissonance between in-school and out-of-school norms and values (see, for instance, Savva and Stanfield, 2018; Poonoosamy, 2010), and that international schools do not generally expose host-country students to local issues, opting instead for a globalised education (Bailey, 2015; Emenike and Plowright, 2017). Our study does not share these conclusions, and local students did not appear to be experiencing such problems. Our research suggested that the cultural identity of the dominant Greek-Cypriot population is openly celebrated and to a large extent reinforced. The question remains: where does it leave the small international population in these schools? Beyond acknowledging it as an important factor, the headteachers do not have a broader context of reference on how to approach the cultural identity of the school minority. Headteacher C gave an example of how respecting differences can in turn support integration and understanding: ‘You show [students] that you respect [them for who they are] and make them appreciate the differences that they have’. Headteachers and teachers reported organising international days, with students bringing in foods and performing their national dances and songs, having display boards that celebrate different cultures, and asking children in lessons about their cultures. Headteacher B gave an example: ‘In one of the Year 4 English lessons I was covering the topic of celebrations. It was in a class where there were many foreign students: Iranian, Belgian, Australian. Students presented about the special celebrations in their native countries’.

The issue of internationalisation

As the researched schools have to adapt to state requirements, they also have to negotiate space for the provision of international education. Regarding the formal curriculum, the international dimension is introduced through international IGCSE and A-level programmes, or the IB. However, as headteacher B explained: ‘The Cypriot curriculum does not particularly promote intercultural education, therefore a lot of it is done through non-formal teaching such as through PSHE and the unwritten curriculum.’ Headteacher A noted that Cypriot students often do not realise how ‘insignificant Cyprus is compared to the rest of the world’ as ‘they do not seem to have the concept of [its] relative economic and political importance’. Headteacher B indirectly confirmed this observation by saying ‘We try to teach students to understand that the global community is much bigger and more diverse than what they experience in Cyprus; they need to learn this once they go to universities and further’. To a large extent the three schools depend on outside programmes such as Erasmus, Model United Nations (MUN), and European Youth Parliament (EYP). Having mostly Cypriot student populations, these programmes allow them to ‘internationalise’ as students gain awareness of the work of international organisations such as the UN and the EU, and have an opportunity to interact with students from different schools and countries (Elerian and Solomou, 2022). Headteacher A noted that although these programmes help bring Cypriot and international students together, such clubs are limited in their scope to students who are very good English speakers and are strong academically.

The schools also organise career days and bring speakers to show students the realities of the globalised job market first-hand, as explained by headteacher B:

When speakers from the universities that we work with visit the school, they often speak about the changing and competitive job market. . . . They describe how they needed to adapt to change. I believe listening to these first-hand experiences helps our students to understand this issue better.

Providing such programmes suggests that school B understands its globalist mission and the commodity of western education which makes international schools popular. Such meetings not only inform students about studying in the UK (as the majority of its students want to study there) but also about the realities of the western labour market and its demands. However, one issue that emerged from the interviews in this study is that the Cypriot students’ lack of desire to integrate with international students continues after they graduate. As headteachers A and B indicated, their Cypriot graduates progress to good predominantly UK universities and succeed academically, but socially, stay within their Cypriot community and almost automatically enrol in their universities’ Hellenic clubs – although headteacher B noted that this is mostly the case in their first year: ‘as it is a new experience for them, it is understandable that they feel more comfortable in a group that they find familiar. I think that changes in their second year when they need to move out of the dorms and find an apartment outside of the university. I think this is the time when they emerge to interact with the wider society’.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this article we have described three schools in Cyprus that are characterised by a large number of host-country students and teachers and, to an extent, offer both national and international curricula. The predominant issues we observed were cultural and linguistic, and related to the ‘institutional habitus’ (Thomas, 2002; Jabal, 2013) of these schools and their lived and rhetorical-curricular ‘school identity’ (Poole, 2018). In terms of culture, students, teachers and to some extent headteachers acknowledged their schools to be Cypriot. A very clear divide was observed between the Cypriot majority and the international minority of students. This division was reinforced by the frequent use of the Greek language (even in lessons which were intended to be English-medium), the celebration of state and Greek-Orthodox holidays, and the inclusion of Greek-Orthodox Religious Education for Cypriot students. In terms of language, for many Cypriot students the English language was often only a language of academic instruction, while the Greek language was the language of communication. Our findings suggest that these cultural-linguistic characteristics have a direct effect on the level of integration and intercultural understanding among students. International students were likely to complain about the biased school system favouring the locals, overuse of the Greek language by students and teachers, and incidents of bullying. This issue is upsetting for international students who joined these schools on a premise that the schools are English-speaking. On the other hand, many Cypriot teachers and students find it to be out of the norm not to be able to use their native language in their own country. Such a situation, to some level, leads to ‘cultural dissonance’ (Drake, 2004). As in Poonoosamy’s (2015) study in an international school in a post-colonial country, our results suggested that local students do not sufficiently develop intercultural competence in terms of their willingness to engage with people of different cultures. Teachers frequently commented on the need to combat stereotypes and to teach students to understand that the actions of a few do not represent the entire culture. As Woods and Kong (2020: 146) noted in the context of international schools in China, Global Citizenship Education ‘may – to varying degrees of effectiveness – be taught to students in the formal space of the classroom, but it is rarely enforced through the informal spaces of the school, or the spaces of the non-school’. Internationalisation clearly requires work on the part of schools such as the three schools in this study, as students’ exposure to diversity is limited (Elerian and Solomou, 2022); the three schools seemed to try to compensate, through lesson integration and exchange of cultural knowledge between diverse student communities, as well as through student participation in various international programmes.

This poses a question: how international are the schools presented here? The three researched schools could be classified as international under the ISC description, as well as under Bunnell’s (2019) definition. They would fall on the lowest end of the international school framework proposed by Hill (2016) in terms of student population diversity (1/4) and governing body (1/4) as in all three cases the owners and the headteachers were Cypriot. At the same time, they could be allocated the highest score regarding the full fee requirement (3/3), and a medium-low (2-3/5) score in terms of the curricula offered: a predominantly international programme of study with elements of the Greek-Cypriot national curriculum. According to Hill (2016), therefore, the schools presented here, although at a very low level, would classify as international. However, based on the lived experience of their school community, that to a large extent is determined by these schools’ predominant characteristics, it may be in fact that they would be better characterised as ‘internationalised’ (Poole, 2018, 2020; Tarc, 2019). As Poole (2020) noted, classifying a school as ‘internationalised’ rather than ‘international’ does not need to have a negative connotation, as it changes the perception of the school from the deficit perspective of being ‘not-sufficiently international’ to the more positive being ‘fully internationalised’. In fact, headteachers and teachers who participated in this study were very aware of the constraints and the extent to which their schools are able to facilitate international education. Moreover, by teaching English as well as additional languages, teaching some level of intercultural understanding, and providing access to global tertiary education, these schools offer a platform from which students may work towards international mindedness or an international perspective in a more multinational setting. Nonetheless, further research and reflection is needed in order to understand more fully the school community, culture, climate, and institutional and lived identity of international schools worldwide that share the characteristics of the schools described here.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Dr Martyna Elerian has a PhD in International Relations and European Studies (University of Nicosia) and a Master’s degree in History (Nicolaus Copernicus University). Her research focus is on multiple dimensions of international education, including international schools, international mindedness, global citizenship and intercultural education. Dr Elerian spent 10 years teaching in international schools, is a History Assessment Specialist for Cambridge Assessment International Education and has been involved in a number of international educational programs.

Dr Emilios A Solomou received his Doctorate from the University of Middlesex, UK. He is Director of the UNESCO Chair at the University of Nicosia, where he teaches Cyprus History and History Didactics. He is President of the Cyprus Society of Historical Studies, Vice President of the Cyprus Folk Museum and the Cyprus Pedagogical Association, and has roles in many other professional associations and organizations in Cyprus, the UK and the USA. He has published many articles and books, and is Managing Editor of the Cyprus Review.

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