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Academics

Our students go from here to anywhere. This is how they prepare for the trip.

Global education has been at the heart of our mission since our founding nearly 60 years ago. We benefit from a multilingual, multinational school community and from bilingual, French, and International Baccalaureate programs. The core of our internationally-minded education is cross-cultural cognition — the ability to think, feel, and act across cultures.

Each student's time at The International School of San Francisco is spent on a well-mapped journey of academic excellence and cross-cultural cognition. Our Pre-K through Grade 12 educational program is organized into four divisions: Maternelle, Lower School, Middle School, and High School. At French American (Maternelle, Lower School and Middle School), our curriculum is French-English bilingual. At International High School, students can choose to pursue a bilingual curriculum or an English curriculum (as bilingual abilities are not required). No matter the path, students learn from multicultural peers and educators, and embark on international expeditions that teach through first-hand experience. 

Our academic program is rigorous—meeting the high standards of both the French and American educational systems—with more attention given to the depth of understanding than just the gathering of information. Our expectations are very high, but we provide plenty of support.

Even though we live in San Francisco, our minds are constantly opened to the world around us. When you walk down the halls there are posters in French and Spanish. I frequently bump into my best friend coming from her Arabic class as I’m on my way to History taught by a teacher who’s French, but just spent two years in Indonesia. And it’s the fact that we’re interacting with people from everywhere that is preparing us to have this really unique global perspective when we graduate.

Sophie,
Class of '21


The International School of San Francisco is the first school in California and the fourth school in the United States to be authorized as an International Baccalaureate World School for the Diploma Program. It received its authorization in 1979 and is the first school west of the Mississippi to receive this recognition.

The International School of San Francisco is a Candidate School for the Middle Years Programme (MYP). This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy—a commitment to high-quality, challenging, international education that French American International School and International High School believes is important for their students.