British Council Nepal awarded International Schools Award to nine Nepalese schools at an event organised at Hotel Radisson on 25th March 2013. The schools who received different categories of awards are:
Full award
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Gurukul Academy
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Annal Jyoti Boarding School
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Nagarjuna Academy Higher Secondary School
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Harvard Academy
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Apex School
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Karunanidhi Education Foundation Higher Secondary School
Intermediate award
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Bhu. Pu. Sainik English Higher Secondary Boarding School
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Balodaya Higher Secondary School
Foundation award
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Paramount Public School
The schools receiving the full award will be provided with a trophy and certificates and will be allowed to use the International School Award logo on all the official stationeries for a period of three years. Schools receiving the intermediate award can use the logo for 2 year where as schools receiving the foundation award can use it for one year.
British Council Nepal piloted the International School award in 2012 with only ten schools participating in the process. These schools worked on seven different projects including a collaborative project with their partner school which was based on their school curriculum. These projects were then assessed based upon their learning outcomes by a panel which included BC officials, officials from the Department of Education and Curriculum Department Centre. This award is endorsed and supported by the Ministry of Education. The 2013 award will be announced on April 2013 and will be open to all schools from Nepal with an international collaboration dimension in the curriculum.
The British Council offers the International School Award (ISA) as an accreditation framework for schools to record and evaluate their international work and embed it into the curriculum. International School Award (ISA) acts as a benchmark that ascertains schools as having an outstanding level of support for:
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Nurturing global citizenship in young people
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Enriching teaching and learning
The ISA approach to school development is holistic and mirrors the curriculum based project work approach to encourage the teachers to use with their students. It is rigorous and evidence based process. It encourages the leaders to foster teambuilding, innovation, and project management. The schools need to put together the action plan and the portfolio of evidence that encourages collaboration and critical thinking. ISA is content free and schools are encouraged to embed it within their own curriculum. ISA gives context to practice new skills in Information & Communications Technology (ICT) and pedagogy in a safe and structured manner. Participating in briefings and workshops, online community and the award ceremony brings together a large number of schools across the country fostering rich exchange of ideas and creating a vibrant community of education professionals.
Mahashram Sharma, Joint secretary, Minister of Education was congratulating all the schools for putting in so much of hard work to fulfil the award criteria and finally winning the award. He was grateful towards British Council for initiating such an award to encourage “project based” learning in schools. He emphasised on the point of partnering with state owned schools so that the learning can be shared in mutual ways.
