George Dixon school, Edgbaston, Birmingham. Thursday morning. A young Kosovan woman of about 18 arrives with her 14-year-old brother to see Bob Dowling, the head. The woman speaks some English. Her brother speaks none. She’s heard that the school is good at teaching English. “Will you take him in?” she asks. After a little questioning it’s clear that the boy and his sister left Kosovo when their parents went missing, and the young woman is now in charge of the brother she obviously cherishes.

“I knew there was no room in Year 9,” says Bob Dowling, recalling the incident. “But in the face of what that girl had taken on - fending for her brother, moving across Europe, finding him a place to learn English - I felt I had no right to quibble. So I told her that of course I would take him. She asked about uniform, and I said, ‘just send him along and we’ll sort him out’. When I put my hand out to shake hers, she kissed it. It was so humbling. And we think we have troubles.”

George Dixon, in a part of Edgbaston that was once very white and middle-class and is now richly multicultural, has been bending to educational change for a century and a quarter. It’s been a board school, a grammar and a comprehensive. Now, in acknowledgment and celebration of the qualities that people such as that Kosovan family are bringing in, it is adding the word “international” to its name. Chief education officer Tim Brighouse unveiled the new sign on November 26, watched by Mr Dowling, who took over this inner-city school when it was in special measures, two and a half years ago.

But aren’t international schools those well-heeled places that cater for expats in South America or the Gulf? Traditionally, yes, but Tim Brighouse reckons there’s a livelier brand of internationalism to be found in most British cities. “Here’s a school with students and staff from three continents,” he says. “And Birmingham’s always been an international city anyway. Why shouldn’t we have a school that is proud of that?” Most multicultural schools do their best to value and celebrate diversity. But they are not helped by a national curriculum that allows teachers no leeway for bringing individual students’ backgrounds, experiences and first languages into the classroom.

Part of Bob Dowling’s solution for George Dixon, with students from 37 countries, is to offer the international baccalaureate - a qualification and teaching programme devised to accommodate each student’s language and culture. It’s a huge challenge for the staff, but senior management see the project as a unifying force for a school pulling itself out of trouble. “It’s created an enormous professional dialogue,” says Mr Dowling. “Everyone’s had to stop and think what they are doing.”

So, for example, although some state schools offer the IB diploma course to sixth-formers, none does the IB’s middle years programme (MYP) because of the difficulty of integrating it with the national curriculum and SATs. But George Dixon plans to be the first to do the MYP. Dave Housley, chair of the school’s academic board, says: “Gradually, we are matching it up. We’ll have to be more focused in some areas, but we’re sure it can be done, and the IB’s trainers see no conflict.”

According to sixth-form teacher Steve Walker, discussions with senior students provide a hint of what could happen all the way through the school. “In the sixth form,” he says, “I’ve been debating the future of South Africa with a group that includes two South Africans - one from the black community, one from the Asian. We see enrichment of the curriculum from the students themselves.”

The new sense of purpose came with the appointment of Mr Dowling in Easter, 1999. Surprisingly, he arrived with no previous senior experience of secondary schools; now 59, he had spent most of his career in special education as a teacher, a head and an adviser, and latterly as a head of school for children with behavioural difficulties. So far as Tim Brighouse is concerned, though, he has what it takes. “He had the right qualities,” says Mr Brighouse. “He could easily learn what he needed to know about secondary schools.”

Although he qualified as a teacher in London in the Sixties and has been in Birmingham for 25 years, Mr Dowling was born in Kerry in Ireland. He’s proud of his Irish roots. They give him an edge, he says, in running a multi-ethnic community. “I understand the concept of being an immigrant. I understand the whole idea of difference, of alienation, of needing to integrate. I know the value of a culture and its history.”

So when the events of September 11 threatened to unsettle relationships between Muslim students and others, he was able to tackle the issue in assembly. “Am I to blame for the murders and bombings of Irish terrorists?” he asked. “Of course not. Are the Muslims here to blame for what happened in America? Of course not.”

The message took hold - when the Real IRA planted a car bomb in Birmingham in early November, a girl reminded him of his words. “We understand what you mean now,” she said.

Grasping the issue like that is typical of his approach. Recalling his time in special education, he says: “I enjoyed being the troubleshooter. I had the ability to cut through the bureaucracy and avoid the paperwork. I often found that the rules were an impediment to progress and you had to find a way round them.”

As the incident with the Kosovan girl and her brother shows, it’s an attitude he deploys to good effect in support of George Dixon students and their families. He deals with an anxious, non English-speaking man whose child is apparently ineligible for free meals. A staff member, acting as interpreter, helps him explain the problem. Bob Dowling cuts it short, hands back the papers the man has brought and looks him in the eye. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We will give your son free meals.” The man is impassive and dignified, but you can’t miss the flash of relief on his face.

Later, Mr Dowling points out that the school won’t get the money back from anywhere. “But what do you tell a father who has refugee vouchers for food but can’t afford a bus pass or school dinners? Do you say, ‘Your child must walk and go hungry’?” The school came out of special measures last year with all the performance indicators pointing upwards. In 1999, about 40 children wanted to join Year 7. This summer, the figure was 160. The percentage of students achieving Level 5 in key stage 3 SATs has gone from the high 20s to the mid-30s in English and science, and from 29 to 42 in maths.

Always, though, league table scores are heavily knocked down by the high number of students who come to the school as new arrivals into the UK - many of them well beyond Year 7 - with poor English. Bob Dowling is quietly furious about this because he’s taking on some very able students, many from refugee families, who are making excellent progress in the face of serious social and language difficulties. “I can show at any time that the school is flying,” he says. “I have youngsters here who will go to university, into apprenticeships and be good citizens. But we will always be handicapped by a system that compares me with leafy shires. It’s stupid.”

The key to motivating his students, he says, is to give them self-belief, and the IB, which, for example, asks students to study the literature of their own first language, will be harnessed to that end. “I’m trying to give our kids an edge,” he says. “That little bit extra. I tell them, ‘You matter. You can succeed.’” Tim Brighouse is right behind him. Mr Dowling says: “He knows what he wants, and he expects you to deliver. If you can, he will help you in every way. He may come and say something’s rubbish, but that’s OK because if you tell him he’s mad, he has no problem with that.”

Mr Brighouse’s own vision of internationalism is, if anything, running ahead of Bob Dowling’s. “Most authorities have outdoor activities centres in places such as Wales,” he says. “I’m determined that Birmingham will look beyond that insular approach and set up centres that reflect our students’ countries of origin - in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, the Caribbean.”

Birmingham is also working with the Department for Skills and Education as part of the Government’s plan to make “international” a category of specialist school, along with technology, arts, sport and languages. “If recent events have taught us anything,” says Mr Brighouse, “it’s that we can no longer think solely in national terms. The brave country will be the first to go for an international curriculum rather than a national curriculum.”

World schools The first international school opened in the 1920s in Geneva, to serve the employees of international organisations, including the League of Nations and the Red Cross, based there. After the Second World War the concept was taken up in other cities and regions, and in 1968 the international baccalaureate diploma was founded as a worldwide qualification. Now there are 1,182 authorised IB world schools in 101 countries. In the UK, only four schools, all independent, carry the title “international”, although 46 schools and colleges offer the IB, nearly half of them state institutions.

Impington village college in Cambridgeshire has been offering the IB for 10 years to post-16 students, and has developed strong international links as a consequence - one-third of the 280-strong sixth form consists of students from more than 30 countries. Sandra Morton, director of sixth form at Impington, emphasises the value of an international student body. “The trick is to learn how to use them,” she says. “They are your most valuable resource.”

Impington is a truly comprehensive state school with one pupil in three on the special needs register. “There aren’t many schools like us in the IB community,” says Ms Morton. “Across the world it’s associated with private schools and privilege. We’ve worked to break down that idea, and to maintain an inclusive ethos.”

THE IB PROGRAMME

There are three programmes of study - the primary years programme (PYP), the middle years programme (MYP) for 11 to 16-year-olds and the diploma course for post-16s.

Common to all three is an emphasis on making links between academic disciplines, and on valuing the student’s first language and literature. The curriculum is broad - all students have to study humanities, arts and sciences in six academic subjects. Another common thread is the opportunity to pursue a personal project - a student could well use this to show depth of knowledge of a culture and homeland that’s otherwise not acknowledged in the classroom.

Because IB students often move frequently between schools and countries, the programmes are continuously monitored to allow students to show details of attainment at any point.

Full details of the IB’s three programmes are at http:www.ibo.org or write to the International Baccalaureate Organization AfricaEurope Middle East regional office, 15 rue des Morillons, 1218 Grand-Saconnex, Geneva, Switzerland. Tel: 0041 22 791 7740; fax: 0041 22 791 0277; e-mail: ibea@ibo.org