Bali Island School Offers Continuity with the IB Continuum
Travelling to different countries for your career can be complex and challenging at the same time. Mike Miller, Head of Bali Island School (BIS), talks about his background, his vision for the school, and his experience behind his success in the education world with Indonesia Expat.
Hi, Mike!
We’d like to know more about you. My background is in international education, and I’ve been involved in it for over 20 years, many of those years as a leader. In my experience, the most important aspects of leadership in the education sector – or other sectors – is to have integrity, honesty, transparency, and consistency. These are four fundamental values for effective development of not only your school but also your staff and there is an idea not the school. It’s very important as a leader to act with integrity, honesty, and transparency to get the staff to be able to respect and trust what you stand for.
What sets BIS’s education system apart from the rest?
Apart from the IB curriculum, we are the only IB school in Bali and being a continuum school gives us continuity in the learning process. By continuity, what I mean is in IB, we have something known as approaches to teaching and learning that begins in preschool and continues all the way to grade 12. When students join us, they can pass from one IB programme to the next, seamlessly. The teaching and the learning take a similar form which you won’t get in a non-IB continuum school, so what sets BIS aside from the rest is that we are an IB continuum school that can offer continuity and seamless transition.
Why are engaging, empowered, globally-minded, and confident learners part of the core values?
Our mission is aligned with IB’s mission themselves and the reason we choose to talk about producing globally-minded and confident learners is that we want our students to grow up respecting and acknowledging other cultures and other we want them to be listeners, we want them to be effective communicators, and we want them to understand other people’s perspectives. That’s what we mean by empowering the globally-minded. In terms of learners, we want our students to be independent and to be lifelong learners. That is why we choose to have these two aspects in our mission and core values. Being globally-minded and confident learners are two aspects which are fundamental to the IB philosophy.
What’s next for you and BIS?
Many things are coming, however, the most important issues to formulate are our new strategic plans for the next five years. That’s the biggest thing we have going on this year, that would be an ongoing process where many members of the community will be involved to formulate our strategic plan that will take us forward for the next five years.
How can our readers get in touch with you and Bali Island School?
Quite easily They can come along to the school and receive a school tour if they’re interested in what we offer in terms of teaching and learning. If people can’t come to the school, they may contact the school and have telephone conversations or online conversations as well, but our doors and our gates are always open for visitors.
