Jane Larsson, executive director of the Council of International Schools (CIS), grew up in a small town in New York State, near the Canadian border, with four brothers.

This, she says, proved vital preparation for her early career in corporate America working as a regional supervisor for the Ponderosa restaurant chain, where she would find herself in male-dominated environments - yet able to be comfortable, forge friendships and “really relate”.

“In my own career, in my first job, I was the only woman with a supervisory responsibility out of a group of 80,” says Larsson, talking to Tes.

“So I would go into meetings in corporate America as the only woman with 79 men who all had the same role I did across the country. I’m really grateful for having a lot of early formative experiences around a lot of men - not only my brothers but their friends.”

Dust off your founding documents

Now based in the Netherlands as executive director of CIS - a role she has held since 2010 - Larsson says she wants to use her influence to encourage international schools to embrace a more diverse range of leaders in terms of gender, but also ethnicity and native language.

International schools need to respond, she says, to the changing diversity of the pupil population as they increasingly serve local families, not just expatriates.

Her message is that they need to “dust off their founding documents” and “check they are still relevant for the community they’re serving today”.

“Sometimes they have rules embedded into even their hiring practices about who can lead the school, who can teach at the school. Are those still appropriate?” she asks. “What do those policies say about who the leader of the school has to be? Does it still have to be someone from another country?”

It is time for a “rethink”, she adds - and the question should also extend to teaching staff and the governing body: “Do they represent the right understanding of that community?”

Changing face of international education

These outdated founding bylaws, says Larsson, can also limit schools in terms of the languages they embrace.

She continues: “Sometimes you find schools are really struggling to make the move to bilingual or trilingual education. Maybe originally, they even banned the speaking of the local language in the school because they wanted them to speak the target language.

“But nowadays it can be completely different and about fostering a new type of approach to language education and learning.”

These changing pupil demographics - brought about in part by a growing middle class in emerging economies - are something Larsson has witnessed first-hand, given she started working in the sector at the International Schools Services in the US as a volunteer in 1993.

“What I understood international education to be then and what I see it to be now at CIS are two completely different things,” she says.

Larsson praises international schools that have moved beyond providing the national education of one country and towards embracing the curricula and languages of multiple countries.

International schools that have evolved in this way give their pupils “a deeper understanding of our world, in all its diversity”, she says.

And successfully making this transition, she explains, is not just about responding to today’s more diverse pupil population - it is also about preparing all young people for the world they will enter when they leave.

Much work to do

Sadly, though, she says this is not always the case. “Heartbreaking” stories have been shared by former international school pupils, says Larsson, who have said they felt their education did not prepare them for the wider world.

These former pupils talk about being “protected from the world” and “not exposed to difference”, she says.

One of them, Nunana Nyomi, worked for CIS in June 2020 and wrote a blog on the body’s website calling for the international education community to “make anti-racism a core value”.

Like many others, it was the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police the previous month that spurred him into action.

International education was, he wrote, complicit “in maintaining racialised inequity”.

Nyomi, who is now a secondary school principal himself, called for the sector to address inequalities in teacher recruitment and move away from the “largely white Western staffing” - as well as the imposing of “a Western-dominant, English-centric international school monoculture” on pupils.

The blog led other former pupils to speak out and, in 2020, the Organisation to Decolonise International Schools was founded by two international school alumni, Clara Reynolds and Xoài David.

They talked about “the gaping holes” in their “not-so-global curriculum” and their education being “highly Western and white” - even though it took place in the global south.

Since then, Larsson says a lot of time has been spent by schools “listening, reflecting and improving” to try to respond to these concerns.

“Many schools have focused on the need to intentionally foster inclusion through an examination of diversity, equity and anti-discrimination,” she says.

”[They] have now intentionally diversified their curricula, their languages and, importantly, their approach to social and emotional learning, with a focus on wellbeing.”

But there is still work to do; international schools need to look “more intentionally at what leads to intercultural understanding”, Larsson says - with the language of instruction one notable area.

For example, in his 2020 blog, Nyomi spoke about losing the ability to speak his mother tongue because of pressure to “assimilate and not celebrate the value of my unique linguistic identity”.

A safeguarding shock - and a sector revolution

Another thorny issue Larsson has been at the forefront of is that of improving safeguarding in international schools - especially after high-profile revelations in 2014 that a long-serving international teacher had drugged and abused hundreds of pupils at schools around the world.

His crimes shook Larsson personally - she says she knew him and his family and experienced a lot of guilt, questioning why she didn’t spot the abuse and how it could have happened.

However, shock turned to action, and the International Taskforce on Child Protection was established with Larsson installed as chair - a role she still holds today.

This led to “a massive educational campaign” coupled with “every single” inspection and accreditation agency being approached to adopt new child protection standards to bring about “structural, systemic change”.

“We think we have done a good job raising awareness in safeguarding, but it’s an ever-ongoing effort,” she says.

Now the challenge is that “a lot of harm and abuse is happening digitally in the online world”.

Again, Larsson advocates education “first and foremost” so young people are “aware of the risks”.

What a changing world means for international schools

Despite these challenges, the international schools sector is growing, and last year it passed the 15,000-school milestone - growth that has seen CIS’ membership grow from around 665 schools when Larsson joined to over 950 now. It also represents over 600 higher education institutions.

But growth has not been “exponential”, says Larsson, because “you don’t just pay a fee and become a CIS member” - “an in-depth quality assurance process comes with membership”.

She explains: “As a CIS school, we have to ensure a basic level of ethical conduct, and there are also minimum standards related to safeguarding and wellbeing - but also governance.

“So our schools are known for a certain level of rigour and quality.”

Nevertheless, while the sector is expected to continue to grow, it is clear that the world in which it is operating is changing.

Last month, Canadian president Mark Carney made a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos saying the international rules-based order isn’t just going through a transition - it is in “the midst of a rupture”.

The implications for international schools are unclear, but Carney’s warning that one response could be that countries build “higher walls” and “their own fortresses” will do little to inspire optimism - especially as schools and universities have already had a taste of this.

Larsson agrees that protectionist and nationalistic measures are “really threatening international education”.

She continues: “There was a whole period where international education was exploding in terms of growth, and the universities were largely driving that and welcoming international students.

“Now, all of a sudden, what’s happening? Governments are putting the brakes on and saying, ‘It’s too much. We want to go back to our roots. We have too many people coming in.’”

Larsson says this could lead online school offers to expand and for families to look for international moves for education “in countries where those barriers might not exist”.

Where international schools spring up in the future will, therefore, depend on which governments facilitate their growth, she says.

And she adds: “We can’t underestimate the role of government in terms of its openness and how it foresees the future of its country.

“If we take the top five countries where we have our school membership and the top five countries where we have university membership, you definitely see the top five are where governments have intentionally invested in international education.”

Local-international crossover

It’s a point with extra relevance for the UK after the government recently updated its International Education Strategy for the first time since 2019.

It wants to boost education exports by £8 billion with the goal of generating £40 billion by 2030. Most of this will be driven by UK universities, but other areas include the expansion of international schools offering the British curriculum.

However, Larsson also urges caution, relating tales of sister settings of well-known British private schools being referred to as “rent-a-name schools”.

“You can imagine what that conveys, right? It’s like, here’s what’s on the tin, but then here’s what happens inside,” she says.

When you are “putting something different into a new culture”, there has to be a lot of “time, thought and consideration” invested in understanding the needs of families as well as their “hopes and dreams”.

Schools that do not do this are destined to “struggle”, she warns. Recently, of course, North London Collegiate School’s Singapore offshoot hit the headlines over accusations that it had put profits before education and welfare.

Larsson also says that governments are grappling with how to respond, be that through accreditation or inspection.

“The reason they are worried about this is they are getting complaints from their citizens saying, ‘What are you doing to ensure the quality of education in these international schools?’”

She says CIS is “spending a lot of time educating government agencies, ministries and departments of education that are trying to understand the nature of education that’s happening when private schools open up and are operated by foreign entities”.

Larsson says this is understandable, and the sector must be transparent - and positive - about the impact an international education can offer.

“In today’s world, all education needs to be international even if it’s perceived to be primarily for the local population,” she says.