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Source guide

COBIS Schools: A Source Guide to the Council of British International Schools

Reviewed byJohn Thomas, Founder, SchoolIntellast reviewed May 2026

COBIS — the Council of British International Schools — is the canonical membership association for British-style schools operating outside the UK. It represents roughly 280 to 330 member schools across more than 80 countries, runs the Patron's Accreditation scheme (recognised alongside the UK DfE's BSO inspection and Cambridge / Pearson exam boards), hosts the COBIS Annual Conference each May in London, and operates the COBIS-Compass professional learning programme year-round. For vendors, COBIS works best as one disciplined layer in a stacked filter — the layer that confirms British-curriculum fit — combined with regional bodies BSME (Middle East) and FOBISIA (Asia), school groups, role coverage, and live signals.

Build a COBIS target marketSee data sources ↓

Member schools

~280–330

Source: COBIS school search (May 2026)

Countries represented

80+

Source: COBIS network overview

Students taught across the network

~200,000

Source: COBIS network statement

Teachers and staff in member schools

~17,000

Source: COBIS network statement

Patron

HRH-named accreditation scheme since 2016

Source: COBIS Patron's Accreditation announcement

Annual Conference

~1,000 delegates each May

Source: COBIS Annual Conference programme

Featured schools

A representative slice of the market

GEMS Wellington International School

Dubai, UAE · British / IB · GEMS Education group · COBIS Patron's Accredited

Anchor British school in the UAE with multi-tier IB pathway; group-level GEMS procurement plus campus IB coordinator and head of digital learning are pre-mapped as paired buying influences.

COBIS school search + GEMS group context

Verified

Brighton College Dubai

Dubai, UAE · British (Prep + Senior) · UK Brighton College brand · COBIS member

Branch of UK Brighton College — premium positioning. Pair vendor outreach with UK Brighton case studies and BSO inspection cycle context.

COBIS + Brighton College group

Verified

Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong

Hong Kong · British / IB · Nord Anglia Education · COBIS member

Inside Nord Anglia's 80+ school global group; group-level decisions on AI, MIS, and curriculum platforms cascade across the entire NAE network.

COBIS + Nord Anglia network

Verified

The British School of Brussels (BSB)

Tervuren, Belgium · British + IB Diploma · independent · COBIS Patron's Accredited

Long-established European COBIS anchor; runs full English National Curriculum with IB DP at sixth form. Strong fit for assessment and DP-aligned products.

COBIS school search + BSB site

Verified

The British School in The Netherlands (BSN)

The Hague, Netherlands · British (multi-campus) · COBIS Patron's Accredited

Three-campus operation across primary and senior; multi-site procurement across BSN means group-style outreach beats single-school pitches.

COBIS + BSN site

Verified

St George's British International School

Rome, Italy · British / IB · COBIS member

British + IB DP school in a Cambridge-aligned market; competitive switch market for assessment and parent-comms platforms.

COBIS + school site

Verified

International School of London (ISL) Surrey

Woking, UK · IB / British · COBIS member

UK-based but international-focused — useful proof-point bridge for vendors with EU/ME case studies expanding into UK independent.

COBIS + ISL group

Verified

King's College, The British School of Madrid

Madrid, Spain · British (EYFS–Y13) · King's Group · COBIS Patron's Accredited

King's Group flagship in Iberia; group-level decisions cluster across King's Madrid, Murcia, Alicante, and Latam campuses.

COBIS + King's Group

Verified

The British School of Barcelona (BSB Barcelona)

Barcelona, Spain · British (multi-campus) · Cognita group · COBIS member

Inside Cognita's ~100-school global group. Cognita group HQ procurement is the primary route for cross-campus platform buys.

COBIS + Cognita network

Verified

The English School Kuwait

Kuwait City, Kuwait · British · COBIS Patron's Accredited

One of the longest-established British schools in the Gulf; cross-references to BSME for regional event context.

COBIS + BSME

Verified

The English School Nicosia

Nicosia, Cyprus · British · COBIS Patron's Accredited

Independent national-flagship British school; A-Level and Cambridge IGCSE pathway with strong Oxbridge progression history.

COBIS + school site

Verified

Anglo-American School of Moscow / British International School Moscow

Moscow, Russia · British · independent · COBIS member

Geopolitical risk affects buying cycles; SchoolIntel monitors COBIS membership status changes alongside operational signals.

COBIS + school site

Verified

Tanglin Trust School

Singapore · British / IB · COBIS Patron's Accredited

One of the largest British international schools globally; cross-listed with FOBISIA — overlap point for vendors prospecting both networks.

COBIS + FOBISIA

Verified

St. John's International School

Waterloo, Belgium · IB · COBIS member

IB-focused European member — less British-only than typical COBIS member; useful nuance when IB-specific outreach is the goal.

COBIS + IBO

Verified

Aiglon College

Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland · British / IB · independent boarding · COBIS member

Premium British boarding in Switzerland; pairs well with assessment, university-prep, and wellbeing vendors with UK independent proof points.

COBIS + school site

Verified

What COBIS is — and why it became the canonical British international school network

The Council of British International Schools (COBIS) is the headline membership association for British-style schools operating outside the UK. Founded in 1981 and reformed under its current name in 2003, COBIS today represents roughly 280 to 330 member schools across more than 80 countries, educating around 200,000 students with about 17,000 staff. It is patroned by HRH The Duke of York, and its accreditation scheme — the Patron's Accreditation and Compliance — is named for that role. For anyone selling, partnering, or recruiting into the British international school market, COBIS is the single most useful starting source.

What makes COBIS the canonical network is not just its size, but its specificity. Other directories are broad — the IBO directory covers any IB-authorized school regardless of national curriculum; ISC Research covers every English-medium international school it can find. COBIS is narrower and deeper: its members self-select as British-curriculum schools and accept inspection against UK-derived standards. That makes COBIS membership a useful filter — if a school is in COBIS, you can assume English National Curriculum, Cambridge International or Pearson Edexcel International exam pathways, British Schools Overseas (BSO) inspection familiarity, and a leadership team comfortable with UK independent-school conventions.

For EdTech vendors, agencies, recruiters, and curriculum partners, the practical value is that COBIS is one of the few sources where a school's presence is itself a qualifying signal. A school that has paid COBIS dues and passed Patron's Accreditation has, in effect, been pre-validated for British-curriculum fit. The British Schools Overseas source guide and the IB World Schools source guide are the natural complements — most COBIS schools also appear in one or both of those.

Member schools

~280–330

Source: COBIS school search

Countries

80+

Source: COBIS network overview

Students taught

~200,000

Source: COBIS network statement

Why a vendor should care about a school being in COBIS

Three things change when a school is a COBIS member, and all three matter for outreach quality:

  • Curriculum certainty: you can assume English National Curriculum + IGCSE + A-Level (or IB DP at sixth form), which lets product-fit messaging skip the explanatory paragraph.
  • Inspection familiarity: the leadership team has either passed BSO inspection or COBIS Patron's Accreditation — both reference the same UK DfE standards, so safeguarding, learning and teaching, and leadership criteria are framed the same way.
  • Network behaviour: COBIS heads cluster at the COBIS Annual Conference each May, share procurement notes through COBIS-Compass, and reference each other when evaluating new platforms. Word of mouth inside the network is unusually strong.

The Patron's Accreditation scheme — and how the three membership tiers actually work

COBIS uses three formal school membership categories, and confusing them is the most common mistake outside vendors make on first contact:

Patron's Accredited Member is the highest tier. It means the school has been independently inspected against the COBIS Patron's Accreditation framework — covering learning and teaching, leadership, communication, extra-curricular provision, and compliance. The scheme launched in October 2016 under HRH The Duke of York and is the default route to full accreditation for schools without a recent BSO inspection. Roughly a third of COBIS members hold this tier at any given time.

Accredited Member (BSO) is the route for schools that have already passed a UK DfE British Schools Overseas inspection. Because the BSO standards overlap heavily with COBIS Patron's Accreditation, COBIS recognises a successful BSO report as equivalent for membership purposes — schools don't pay for two near-identical inspections.

Accredited Member (CIS) is a smaller tier — schools recognised through Council of International Schools (CIS) accreditation who have also met COBIS-specific British-curriculum criteria. Useful for schools that run multi-curriculum programmes alongside English National Curriculum.

COBIS Member is the entry tier — the school has joined COBIS but is either pre-accreditation or is not yet in scope for the formal inspection cycle. Many schools sit here for 12 to 24 months while preparing for Patron's Accreditation.

Patron's Accredited

highest tier

Source: COBIS membership categories

Accredited (BSO)

DfE BSO route

Source: UK DfE BSO standards

COBIS Member

entry tier

Source: COBIS membership categories

COBIS membership tiers — approximate share of network

Approximate distribution across the three formal COBIS tiers. Patron's Accredited is the highest external-validation tier; Accredited (BSO) maps to a successful UK DfE British Schools Overseas inspection; the remainder hold COBIS Member status while moving toward accreditation.

Why the tier matters when you read a target list

Treat tier as a quality and timing signal, not just a label:

  • Patron's Accredited: settled, confident, defending positioning. Premium-tier vendors win when they reinforce strengths — analytics, AI, advanced enrichment, university-prep.
  • Accredited (BSO): recently inspected by the UK DfE. Read the published BSO report — it names exact improvement priorities. Map your product to the report wording.
  • COBIS Member (pre-accreditation): the most active buying tier. Schools preparing for Patron's Accreditation are often investing in safeguarding, MIS/SIS, learning analytics, and curriculum management — the categories COBIS inspectors look at hardest. See the head of digital learning role page for the typical buying influence.

Where COBIS schools actually are — geography, density, and overlap

The COBIS interactive map is the easiest visualisation of the network, but the underlying distribution is more useful for planning than the dots suggest. Europe (including UK-based international schools) accounts for roughly a third of the network — heavy clustering in Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. The Middle East — UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi, Bahrain — is the second-densest region, where COBIS overlaps strongly with BSME — British Schools in the Middle East. Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region, where COBIS overlaps with FOBISIA. Africa — Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, Ghana — is the deepest non-European cluster after the Gulf.

The overlap pattern matters operationally. A British school in Dubai is almost certainly in both COBIS and BSME. A British school in Singapore is almost certainly in both COBIS and FOBISIA. That has two practical implications: (1) a target list filtered only by COBIS will under-count regional context, and (2) the regional bodies often run faster, more local events than the COBIS Annual Conference, so events-as-signal needs both layers. See the BSME conference page and our Dubai British schools market map for the regional read.

COBIS scope

global British network

Source: COBIS network overview

BSME scope

Middle East regional

Source: BSME association

FOBISIA scope

Asia regional

Source: FOBISIA association

Where COBIS member schools sit — geographic spread

High-level regional spread of the COBIS network across 80+ countries. Europe and the Middle East dominate the network; Asia is the fastest-growing stripe (and the overlap point with FOBISIA).

  • Europe (incl. UK)35.0% of members
  • Middle East25.0% of members
  • Asia-Pacific18.0% of members
  • Africa10.0% of members
  • Americas8.0% of members
  • Central Asia / CIS4.0% of members

How COBIS, BSME, and FOBISIA differ in scope

Three associations, three scopes — they overlap heavily on the school list but differ on the unit of activity:

  • COBIS: global network, accreditation-led. The full Patron's Accreditation scheme, the May annual conference, and the COBIS-Compass professional learning programme all operate at network scale.
  • BSME: Middle East regional, events-led. BSME runs the Annual School Leaders' Conference and several training days a year for British schools in the Gulf and Levant. Many BSME members are also COBIS members.
  • FOBISIA: Asia-Pacific regional, sport- and inter-school-events-led. FOBISIA runs inter-school sports, music, and STEM events as well as professional learning. Strong overlap with COBIS for the bigger Asian schools.
  • Practical filter: if a school is in COBIS + BSME, you have a Gulf-anchored British school with regional buying habits. If it's in COBIS + FOBISIA, you have an Asia-anchored British school. Use the regional body for event planning; use COBIS for accreditation and quality context.

Where COBIS is sparse — and what that means

COBIS membership thins out in the Americas (a handful of schools), in Central Asia, and across most of mainland China. That doesn't mean British international schools don't exist there — it means accreditation infrastructure is shaped differently (China leans toward CIS or NEASC; Americas often default to CIS). For those regions, layer ISC Research or the International Schools Database over COBIS. Don't infer absence of British schools from absence of COBIS membership.

How COBIS membership relates to BSO inspection and Cambridge / Pearson exam boards

Three external systems sit alongside COBIS, and conflating them is the second most common buyer mistake. They are not the same thing — but they overlap by design.

COBIS is the membership association — it organises the network, runs the accreditation scheme, hosts the conference, and provides professional learning. BSO is an inspection scheme run by the UK Department for Education — schools opt in, an approved inspection body (Penta International, Education Development Trust, COBIS itself, ISI, BSI, etc.) inspects them every three to four years, and reports are published on GOV.UK. Cambridge International and Pearson Edexcel International are the exam boards — they own the qualifications (IGCSE, International A-Level, Cambridge Pre-U) that COBIS and BSO schools deliver.

The relationship is layered, not stacked: a typical Patron's Accredited COBIS member has also passed BSO, runs Cambridge International IGCSE/A-Level or Pearson Edexcel International exams, and may also offer IB Diploma at sixth form. Some smaller members run only AQA or OCR routes — the exam-board choice is a school-level decision and worth checking before any qualification-specific outreach.

What this means for vendor messaging

Match the message to the layer that's actually visible to your buyer:

  • Safeguarding, leadership, MIS/SIS, parent comms: frame against COBIS Patron's Accreditation criteria and BSO inspection priorities. COBIS safeguarding standards and the UK DfE BSO standards are the citable anchors.
  • Assessment, marking, and exam prep: frame against Cambridge International, Pearson Edexcel International, or AQA specifications. The qualification specification is the buyer's primary reference.
  • Curriculum and learning analytics: frame against the English National Curriculum + Cambridge progression, and reference the COBIS-Compass professional learning programme for credibility.
  • Wellbeing, SEL, student leadership: reference COBIS Student Leadership conferences — student-facing programmes have a network-recognised home that makes case studies easier to position.

Cross-validation against other sources

When a school appears in COBIS, validating against two adjacent sources builds confidence and depth:

  • BSO inspection report: look up the school on GOV.UK BSO published reports — read the most recent inspection. Strengths and improvement priorities are explicit and citable.
  • IBO directory: if the school runs IB Diploma, the IBO Find an IB School listing confirms PYP/MYP/DP authorization status.
  • Country directories: for UAE schools, cross-check International Schools Database and KHDA ratings; for European schools, the country-specific directories on ISDB are the cleanest cross-check.

The COBIS Annual Conference and COBIS-Compass — the canonical British international events

The COBIS Annual Conference runs every May at the InterContinental London — Park Lane (and occasionally other London venues) and is the single largest gathering of British international school heads, deputies, and senior leaders in the world. Roughly 1,000 delegates attend across three days; the typical mix is heads of school, deputy heads, business managers, and a smaller stream of education sponsors and exhibitors. It is the canonical British international school event — if you sell into this market, the May conference is the meeting point you have to know.

Alongside the annual conference, COBIS runs a year-round professional learning programme branded COBIS-Compass. Compass covers leadership development (aspiring heads, new heads, finance and operations), middle leadership, safeguarding, and subject-specific training. The Compass calendar runs in cohorts and feeds many of the senior promotions inside the network.

Other COBIS events worth tracking: Student Leadership Conferences (twice a year, regional), Heads' New to Post programmes, and the COBIS Student Committee. Each is a credible context-handle for messaging — a vendor with a wellbeing product can reference Student Leadership; a vendor with an MIS/SIS or finance product can reference the COBIS Business Managers programme.

How vendors should actually use the COBIS Annual Conference

The conference is high-density but expensive. The pattern that works is to treat the event as a milestone, not a campaign:

  • Pre-event (March–April): build a target list of COBIS members with active hiring or recent BSO inspection cycles. Use TES international jobs and TIE Online appointments to spot leadership changes; outreach should reference the conference as a meeting milestone, not the pitch.
  • On-event (May, three days): the conversation is leadership-to-leadership. Send a senior team member; the buyer is a head, not a procurement lead.
  • Post-event (June–August): summer planning window. Heads return from the conference with action items and 100-day plans. Follow-up sequences land best when they reference a specific session or speaker.
  • All year: see the COBIS Conference event page for the rolling event-led account-planning workflow.

Comparison with regional events

If the budget is one event, COBIS Annual Conference wins for global reach. If the budget is two events, pair it with the regional body covering your strongest geography:

  • UAE / Gulf focus: pair COBIS with the BSME Annual Conference and GESS Dubai. GESS is exhibitor-led; BSME is leadership-led. Different rooms, different pitches.
  • Asia-Pacific focus: pair COBIS with FOBISIA's regional events. FOBISIA is https://www.fobisia.org/ and the EARCOS calendar — see EARCOS source guide — covers East and Southeast Asia more broadly.
  • Europe focus: COBIS Annual Conference is already London-based, so most European COBIS heads attend. Add country-specific gatherings (NABSS in Spain, BSO Federation events) for the long tail.

The vendor playbook — using COBIS as a target-market layer rather than a list

The wrong way to use COBIS is to download the member list, paste it into a spreadsheet, and spray. The right way is to treat COBIS as one disciplined layer in a stacked filter — the layer that confirms British-curriculum fit — and then stack curriculum, region, group ownership, role, and signal on top.

Most COBIS members are also part of a larger school group: GEMS, Nord Anglia, Cognita, King's Group, Inspired, Globeducate, Dulwich, NLCS, Repton, Wellington, ACS, and the wider Nord Anglia network, GEMS Education, and Taaleem in the Gulf. Group-level procurement at any of these can pre-empt site-level evaluations across dozens of campuses at once — that's where the leverage sits.

  • Stack 1 — confirm fit: filter to COBIS members for British-curriculum fit. Cross-check BSO inspection status for inspection-cycle context.
  • Stack 2 — pick a region: layer regional body — BSME for the Middle East, FOBISIA for Asia-Pacific, none for Europe (use country directories). Region drives event cadence and timing.
  • Stack 3 — pick a group lens: if the product needs group-level procurement (MIS/SIS, AI, identity, multi-school analytics), prioritize members inside Nord Anglia, GEMS, Cognita, Inspired, Dulwich, King's. If the product is school-level (curriculum, EAL, coordinator-specific), the group lens matters less.
  • Stack 4 — match a role: layer the right buyer role — head of digital learning, IB coordinator, EAL coordinator, or business manager — depending on the product category.
  • Stack 5 — wait for a signal: outreach quality scales with timing. New head, new BSO report, KHDA rating change for Gulf members, new campus announcement, IB authorization, or COBIS-Compass cohort attendance are all live signals. Re-score weekly, not annually.
  • Stack 6 — pair with an event milestone: anchor outreach windows around COBIS Annual Conference, BSME Annual Conference, or GESS Dubai. The event is the meeting milestone; the message is the signal.

Sources buyers actually validate against

Smart EdTech buyers don't trust any single source — they triangulate. Here's how the most common COBIS-adjacent sources compare:

  • COBIS school search: membership-grade truth on accreditation tier, country, and British-curriculum fit. Slow to update on hiring or strategic moves.
  • BSO published reports: regulator-grade detail on inspection findings. Strongest source for improvement-area messaging — the report literally lists the priorities.
  • ISC Research: market sizing + paid contact lists. Strong for annual market sizing; built around an annual refresh cycle rather than a weekly one. See ISC Research alternative comparison for the workflow trade-offs.
  • EducationDataLists and similar: static email lists. Cheap, but stale within 90 days and routinely include defunct addresses.
  • SchoolIntel: live source consensus across COBIS, BSO, IBO, school sites, hiring boards, association calendars, and group announcements — re-read weekly with role coverage, signal stamps, and a cited reason per account.

Build this COBIS target market yourself, or use SchoolIntel

Everything on this page is technically buildable from public sources. The COBIS school search, the COBIS map, the BSO published-reports list on GOV.UK, the IBO directory, school websites, and hiring boards are all reachable without a contract. The honest question is whether your team should spend the time. Most don't — not because they can't, but because the integration, normalisation, and freshness work is more expensive than the data itself.

Two paths:

Build it yourself

Realistic effort to assemble a COBIS-anchored target market that is defensible to a sales team:

  • Source inventory: 1–2 days to map COBIS, BSO, IBO, BSME, FOBISIA, ISDB, group press pages, and hiring boards; decide which to scrape vs API; document refresh cadence.
  • Normalisation: 1–2 weeks to dedupe ~280 COBIS schools across multi-campus operators, brand-name variants (Brighton College Dubai vs Brighton College UK), and group naming. The biggest hidden cost.
  • Tier mapping: 1 week to encode COBIS membership tier (Patron's Accredited / BSO / CIS / Member) per school, cross-reference BSO inspection dates, and parse improvement areas into a structured taxonomy.
  • Role coverage: 1 week to scrape staff lists, infer titles to a buyer-role taxonomy, and verify emails (SMTP + 90-day re-check). Smaller European COBIS members often have minimal staff pages — manual fill required.
  • Signal layer: ongoing — weekly checks against TES, TIE, COBIS news, BSO new reports, and group announcements. Engineering owns this in perpetuity.
  • Honest timeline: 1 FTE for ~6–8 weeks to build, then ~0.25 FTE forever to maintain. Stops working the day that engineer leaves.

Use SchoolIntel

What you get without building any of the above:

  • Same-day COBIS target market: filter by membership tier, region, school group, role, and signal — get a sourced list with cited reasons in one session.
  • Live source consensus: every COBIS school carries a confidence score across the 8+ sources we read — COBIS itself, BSO, IB World Schools, school sites, hiring boards, group announcements, and association calendars. You see which schools we trust and why.
  • Role coverage built in: staff lists are pre-mapped to a buying-role taxonomy across head of digital learning, IB coordinator, EAL coordinator, ELL coordinator, business manager — with SMTP-verified contact data inside the product.
  • Weekly re-scored queue: we re-read sources weekly. Your account list reorders itself; you don't rebuild it. New BSO reports, new heads, new campus announcements all land in the queue automatically.
  • Cited reasons per account: every recommended COBIS target has a paragraph explaining why now — backed by source URL, date, and signal type.
  • Agency-ready exports: for agencies and consultancies, see the education marketing agency data page and the school intelligence for EdTech agencies hub for client-deliverable workflows.

Frequently asked questions

Questions this page answers

What is COBIS and how many schools are in the network?

The Council of British International Schools (COBIS) is the membership association for British-style schools operating outside the UK. It currently represents roughly 280 to 330 member schools across more than 80 countries, educating around 200,000 students with about 17,000 staff. It is patroned by HRH The Duke of York and runs the Patron's Accreditation scheme as its primary external-validation route.

What are the COBIS membership tiers and which one matters most?

There are four formal COBIS school membership categories: Patron's Accredited Member (highest tier, full Patron's Accreditation passed); Accredited Member (BSO) (the school passed a UK DfE BSO inspection — recognised by COBIS as equivalent); Accredited Member (CIS) (CIS-route bridge, smaller tier); and COBIS Member (entry tier, often pre-accreditation). For vendor messaging, treat tier as a quality and timing signal — Patron's Accredited schools are settled and defending, COBIS Members in pre-accreditation are the most active buying tier.

How is COBIS different from BSO inspection and the Cambridge / Pearson exam boards?

They sit at different layers. COBIS is the membership association; BSO — British Schools Overseas — is an inspection scheme run by the UK Department for Education that COBIS schools opt into; Cambridge International and Pearson Edexcel International are the exam boards that own the actual qualifications (IGCSE, International A-Level). A typical Patron's Accredited COBIS member has passed BSO and runs Cambridge or Edexcel. They are not interchangeable, but they overlap by design.

How does COBIS differ from BSME and FOBISIA?

COBIS is global — accreditation-led, network-wide. BSME — British Schools in the Middle East is Middle East regional — events-led, runs an annual school leaders' conference and Gulf-focused training. FOBISIA is Asia-Pacific regional — events-led, runs inter-school sports/music events plus professional learning. Many British schools sit in COBIS plus the relevant regional body. Use COBIS for accreditation and global event context; use BSME or FOBISIA for regional event timing.

When is the COBIS Annual Conference and who attends?

The COBIS Annual Conference runs every May at the InterContinental London — Park Lane (and occasional alternative London venues), drawing roughly 1,000 delegates over three days. The audience is heads of school, deputy heads, business managers, and senior leadership from COBIS member schools globally, plus a sponsor and exhibitor stream. It is the canonical British international school event of the year. See the COBIS Conference event page for event-led account planning.

What is COBIS-Compass and why does it matter for vendors?

COBIS-Compass is the umbrella for COBIS's year-round professional learning programmes — leadership development (aspiring heads, new heads, finance and operations), middle leadership, safeguarding, and subject-specific cohorts. The full professional learning calendar sits under this banner. For vendors, COBIS-Compass cohorts are a credible context-handle — partnering with or sponsoring a Compass cohort reaches buyers (heads, deputy heads, business managers) earlier in their tenure than the May conference does.

Should I use COBIS as my single source of truth for British international schools?

Use COBIS as your starting filter, not your only source. Membership confirms British-curriculum fit and gives you a tier signal — but COBIS is slow to update on hiring, strategic moves, and group-level procurement changes. Triangulate against BSO published reports, IBO directory, country directories like International Schools Database, and live hiring boards (TES international, TIE Online) — the way SchoolIntel's source consensus does — to fill the gaps.

Does SchoolIntel publish personal contact details on this page?

No. Public pages explain methodology, sources, and target-account strategy. Personal contact data — names, emails, phone numbers — stays inside the authenticated SchoolIntel product, governed by SchoolIntel's privacy controls and access/removal request process.

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