SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 16, 2013 — In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed by representatives of 50 at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. So it’s fitting that the Association for the Advancement of International Education often holds its annual conference here. The only difference is that far more than 50 countries are represented.
Needless to say, there’s a lot you can learn from a conference of more than 500 heads, directors, and other upper administrators from the best international schools in the world. The first thing you learn is that international means international. From Burma to Paraguay to Qatar to The Gambia, every corner of the world was represented. I felt like a minor leaguer having flown only an hour to San Francisco from LA.
The heaviest insight we learned was that all the AP classes and SAT scores in the world mean nothing in a world where extreme poverty still prevails. That sobering notion came from African human rights activist Kimmie Weeks. It’s a crusade that we all must wage, and it will be the topic of a separate blog post. As far as education is concerned, here are some trends and fascinating facts that were on full display at AAIE:
The Top 10 List:
1. International education keeps growing.
2. Tiny United Arab Emirates has by far the most international schools of any country. That makes sense when you consider that less than 10 percent of the population is native Emirati.
3. Online education, and the ability to bring nearly any course to any school in the world, is one of the most revolutionary and, perhaps, inevitable trends of the next 10 years. Schools administrators are excited by and terrified about it — usually at the same time.
4. The heads of international schools all know each other. It’s a small world after all.
5. While many educators believe that schools should be nonprofit, many strong schools are for-profit entities; many are owned by relatively large school operating companies. Which model serves students better is very much open to discussion.
6. There is growing demand in American universities for international students. I met a representative from the California State University system whose sole job was to recruit international students.
7. Just as American colleges are opening campuses overseas (such as NYU Abu Dhabi), so are high schools. The Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California, is replicating itself in Seoul.
8. ArborBridge conducts its tutoring by videochat. Now some schools are using the same technology to conduct their job interviews. One head told me that the quality of teachers he hires via videochat is every bit as high as those he used to meet in person.
9. There were some interesting and unusual vendors at the conference this year. For example, one of the biggest vendors at the conference sells kidnapping and ransom insurance to international schools.
10. I don’t care where you teach. There’s no place else in the world like San Francisco on a clear day.
