The International Schools Review Forum

@Ntmya5

On paper yes, but not by much. In practice it all depends on how well you can talk the talk at an interview. This may be varying amounts of work but generally IB ITs have an origin story that doesnt include IB and many ISs even those that are classic IBWSs have some historical backbone to their actual curriculum (as all modern curriculum are essentially frameworks now) that lend them themselves to a high degree of congruence between programs increasing in congruence as you approach and enter SLL. Primary has the least, most notable in reading instruction but even then a substantial degree of that difference is owed to scope and sequence rather than differences in content. The next is literature and history owing to difference in text selection and differences in perspective and approaches to historical events. STEM subjects have much neater and closer congruence throughout in K12/KS curriculum.
If you can familiarize yourself with the curriculum, its lexicon, and foundations and you can speak knowledgeably about it in an interview you may as well indicate this on your resume so that you can increase the likelihood of an interview.

Got it - thanks!

One of the schools I am looking at, their head of school is leaving and they have vacanies posted for every grade level. Is this a red flag? :/

associate head of school*

Ntmya5 - IB is underpinned by standards. Many schools use AERO standards for their main curricula (except PE, Music, Art, and Languages) where they choose the standards they want to use. AERO is Common Core light - so you shouldn't be nervous about 'common core' schools - just saying. What standards do you link to in your IB planner? Please tell me you link to standards....

@Ntmya5

It depends, usually yes, but again it depends. An Associate HOS could be a hatchet person, appointed exclusively to clear house. Could be a good thing if youre coming in after the purge with an entirely new staff dynamic and the purge amputated all the dead wood and the remaining staff are all for the most part happy with the result. Thats a scenario where it could be a good thing for you. That doesnt happen that way very often, at least thats how leadership wants it to happen, the end result doesnt usually match the vision.
IE has a lot more movement in staff, and this includes leadership as well so it could be entirely coincidental timing that a particular leader is leaving at a time that a confluence of events such as staff cycles and expansion coincided with leadership individual X also departing. I would be very weary going forward.

As to @SJ. All frameworks are composed of two pillars: objectives and standards. Edu has a better concrete understanding of what objectives are. Standards often get interpreted to mean some type of assessment against criteria abstracted from the objectives. It happens often enough that those assessments and criteria may as well be the designated sitting proxy for standards.
AERO is not Common Core (CC) lite. Its CC expanded. CC specifically addresses literacy and numeracy (reading and maths). With AERO "NextGen" sits for the science framework and the rest of the curriculum is wholly lifted from the CA state curriculum. AERO also addresses world languages in its core and includes fine arts in whats known as AERO+ but even PHE (and for that matter expanded technology/DT, and any other discipline) can be lifted from the CA state curriculum in whole or in part and adopted and called AERO without having to blink.
The IB isnt with out its own embedded standards. AERO is one lexicon of a curriculum framework thats popular in IE for ASs (AP is another, and yes you can do AERO without AP and you can do AP without AERO). Again though as you approach SLL, curriculum get really really congruent so much so that it doesnt really mater what sign posting youre engaging in to mark what curriculum youre using, you may as well refer to it as 'schoolie stuffs' for all the difference it makes. Edu like any other discipline though has to have its lore and in edu that means acronyms and you cant have acronyms without a lexicon. Thats what frameworks and curriculum really do to differentiate themselves, by coming up with different terminology for common constructs to separate this philosophy from this other philosophy. So yes as @SJ stated you shouldnt be nervous about CC or its implementations (such as AERO) you just need to be able to replicate the lexicon so you can mentally click with identifying with the CC curriculum in the mind of whoever is interviewing you.

Thank you! Understood!

I'm currently lurking around Search and was quite surprised to see that the well-known Christian school there has listed everything as a "No" under their "DEI" tab.

@Ntmya5

Why would that be surprising?

DEI isnt desirable in IE, even more so in Asia. Males use one toilet, females use another toilet. There is no use whatever toilet you identify with. An IS is much more likely to have the position 'this may not be the best fit for you' when it comes to DEI. They are for the vast majority not interested in an IT thats going to flaunt whatever their DEI issue is, which there tends to be much tolerance if you keep your private life private. My coin would be that drag queen story hour though would be a pass.

Correction:
Just one particular part stood out to me since all the other schools I had looked at had at least put "In Progress" or "Yes"

"Our school has taken explicit action steps to recruit and retain candidates of color
Answer: No"

@Ntmya5

Whats surprising is their honesty. IE is a white dominate profession and if they wanted to change that they could, easily. There are plenty of non-white ITs in the potential applicant pool but parents attribute western edu with colonial edu and that means white ITs.