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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Reviving a 2 year old thread to plug BISW?  School must be short on enrollment. Everyone knows it’s one of the worst privates in DC. No admissions standards. Everyone gets in. People leave as soon as they can for other schools.[/quote]

I’m the mom who maybe woke up the beast and revived it :). I’m not American and just recently discovered DC Urban Moms and Dads and so out of curiosity searched BISW and came across this thread. I have two kids going to BISW and we are the happiest. Our kids are also very happy. We tried the Catholic School system for two years but as a family never clicked. We then tried another international DC private school that is highly respected and we loved the families there very much but our kids did not like the environment. Too much bullying and meanness that we were not used to (similar to your style of comment except constant :)). This is our 8th year living in DC. We’ve now been at BISW for a couple of years and could not be happier academically and personally. Wish the school had better sports facilities and teams but it is what it is.

So yes, I wanted to set the record straight as a mom of two kids at the school that there are families who are extremely happy there (or we would not be sending our kids there ;)).[/quote]

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on BISW. We are an American family living overseas, and our 3 kids currently go to a British school that uses a mix of the English National Curriculum and IB. My kids are all in Primary still so it is primarily English National Curriculum. We couldn't be happier with our school and with the quality of the teaching, and with the curriculum itself. In our experience, particularly for early literacy and math, the ENC is far superior to any of the various American approaches we experienced ourselves or with our kids before moving overseas. You can have the best school and teachers in the world, but if the curriculum they are teaching is flawed (looking at you, Reading Wars), then you will not get good results.

The British school culture also places a really strong emphasis on developmentally appropriate practices, pastoral care, and building community and collaboration. Our experience with DC privates is that there is a pervasive and toxic level of competitiveness and individualism. Nowhere is that more evident than in the posts on this forum, where a parent saying that they are completely satisfied with their non-Big 3/5/10 school is met with disdain, ridicule, contempt, and gloating.

We will only be in DC for one year, then we will move overseas again to another British school. So for the continuity of our kids' education we are seriously considering BISW. If you can give any more insight on the school, particularly the primary level, I'd love to know. [/quote]

Go for it. We’re an all-American family, looking to escape the same issue a number of other people mentioned here: the toxicity in American school culture and we could not be any happier with our BISW choice. This is our fifth year. The sad part is that some kids your children become friends with leave because there are many diplomatic families but this allows our kids to experience a variety of friendships rather than being in the same clique year after year. The academics is much stronger than the curriculum I have experienced elsewhere and the school is very organized. So highly recommend it. Go for it!![/quote]

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