Berlin Brandenburg International School (BBIS) is a private, state-approved, coeducational English language day and boarding school serving the internationally minded community of Germany's capital region and beyond, we hear from Mr. R. Whitney Sterling

In contrast to boarding schools in the United Kingdom, BBIS offers the unique opportunity to enjoy an English language education and simultaneously learn the German language in the heart of Germany. The BBIS campus is located in the village of Kleinmachnow, bordering the southwest of Berlin, on a large, quiet, wooded hill along the Machnower lake.
Founded in 1990, BBIS is fully authorised by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) in Geneva, Switzerland to teach all three International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes covering the three to 19 year old age range. The school is also fully accredited by the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA).

From early childhood to grade 12, BBIS is truly an international school, with about 650 students representing over 50 different nationalities. BBIS teachers are certified, experienced professionals from all over the world, but mostly from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The 11th and 12th grade students have the opportunity to earn the International Baccalaureate Diploma, a qualification recognised by top universities throughout the world, or a BBIS High School Diploma.

The school’s commitment to academic excellence is matched by a belief in educating the whole person. BBIS offers excellent facilities and an extensive extracurricular programme for students of all ages. Classes are small, usually with fewer than 18 students, enabling teachers to know each student well and address his or her individual needs. As a learning community, the school attaches great value to interaction and cooperation between staff, students, parents, administration, and the wider community.

BBIS Boarding School, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg about 20 minutes from the campus, houses international BBIS students from grades nine through 12 with a minimum age of 15 years old. EU citizens can enter at the sixth grade level when they are approximately 11 years old. The BBIS boarding facility offers five newly renovated double rooms and three single apartments all including private bathrooms. Two comfortable community rooms, a kitchen, a laundry room, and a large courtyard enable our boarding students to truly feel at home and enjoy and learn from each other as a group. Adult mentors live adjacent to the students’ quarters and are responsible for the students’ well being during their time in Berlin-Brandenburg. The morning and evening hours are supervised, as well as weekends, which regularly include outings and activities. Homework support is provided to all students during the evenings before school days.

Through this unique living and learning opportunity, BBIS Boarding School encourages its international students to widen their perspectives and prepare for future challenges in today’s dynamically growing global society.

An ideal solution
Young, ambitious parents increasingly face the challenges of embracing a globally mobile lifestyle. While their children long to stay with their friends and attend a school they know and trust, these parents’ employers expect the young families to relocate to far away countries at regular intervals. The burden this puts on the children and parents is often recognised by the employers, who frequently provide a substantial education allowance for such families. This can create the option of attending an international boarding school in which high school age children attain their diploma without being obliged to change schools or repeatedly build up new groups of friends.

What is an IB boarding school?
An IB boarding school is one that offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) as the final diploma. The International Baccalaureate Organisation (www.ibo.org), the body supervising the implementation of the IB curriculum in K-12, the final exam process for all IB students and the certification of IB schools, stems from a 1968 initiative of teachers at the International School of Geneva in Switzerland. These educators envisioned schools that provide a high quality education for internationally minded families.

Academically intense
Currently, over 700,000 students in more than 130 countries study at over 2,500 IB schools. The IB Diploma Programme covers the final, academically intense phase of an IB education and takes place in the 11th and 12th school years. Recently, the IB was compared to the US high school diploma coupled with a number of advanced placement exams and found to be even more academically demanding. The IB clearly outpaces the United Kingdom’s “A-Levels” and it has been recognised, for example, in Germany as equivalent to the prestigious German “Abitur.” Thus the IB Diploma has become a ticket of entry into all the top colleges and universities around the world. A case in point, the Berlin Brandenburg International IB World School has recently sent students to, among other well respected educational institutions, the Sorbonne, London School of Economics, London Institute of Art, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Free University of Berlin, Berlin University of Arts and Stanford.

Few and far between
IB Boarding Schools are few and far between because most IB schools serve day students. Out of a total of 38 German IB schools, only four offer boarding. A number of boarding schools in Switzerland and some in other countries have added the IB Diploma Programme to their curriculum and a worldwide network of 12 United World Colleges offer boarding and the IB Diploma. All IB Boarding Schools have extensive extracurricular programmes that actively integrate students from so many different countries and cultures.

If your children are old enough and you know that you will have to relocate soon, enrol your children in an IB boarding school. Your children will be challenged, learn even more languages and benefit from the continuity of the culturally rich international boarding school environment.

Contact
Berlin Brandenburg
International School
Head of Boarding: R. Whitney Sterling
Am Hochwald 30
14532 Kleinmachnow
Germany

Tel: +49 33203 8036-0
Email: whitney.sterling@bbis.de
Web: www.bbis.de