Cedar School welcome page

Cedar International School

Dear Visitors:

I extend a cordial welcome to all community members and guests visiting the Cedar International School website. Cedar School is an international private school located in Kingstown, Tortola in the beautiful British Virgin Islands. Our mission is to provide each student we serve the opportunity to achieve his/her academic best with an international curriculum within a culturally diverse environment; to encourage leadership, character, creativity, and community service; and to nurture inquiring minds and caring personalities in all students.

Cedar International School serves more than 250 students from Lower Kindergarten (age 3) through grade 12 (age 18). Our learning community is richly diverse, with students representing approximately 40 nationalities and our teachers hailing from 8 different nations. The small student body guarantees a favourable student-teacher ratio and fosters a positive, caring relationship between younger and older students. The school’s academic programmes are complemented by an extensive roster of extracurricular activities ranging from soccer to surfing and from drama to cooking.

Cedar International School is accredited by the Council of International Schools and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (United States). Several years ago the school embarked on an ambitious plan to seek authorisation to offer all three of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes—the Primary Years Programme (PYP), the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and the Diploma Programme (DP). IB World Schools share a common philosophy—a commitment to a high quality, challenging, international education. Cedar was highly successful in this endeavour, becoming an IB World School in late 2008 after achieving authorisation to teach both the Middle Years and the Diploma programmes.

During the 2009-2010 school year, the faculty and administration worked diligently to fulfill a number of important goals. Firstly, the Primary teachers continued their planning and implementation of the Primary Years Programme in preparation for an IB authorisation visit in May. The visit went very well, and we are optimistic that Cedar International School will become the first school in the Caribbean to be authorised to teach all three IB programmes—PYP, MYP and DP—school wide. This was also an important year for our first class of IB Diploma Programme students. The DP students completed all of the demanding internal and external assessment in mid-May, and students, parents and teachers are now eagerly awaiting the official results that will be made available in early July.

Cedar International School continues to grow and to change physically. Thanks to generous donor support, we were able to install interactive white boards (SmartBoards) in all the classrooms and to make other enhancements to classroom technology. This summer we will build a new art classroom above the existing library and computer lab. This purpose-built space will provide our students with an expanded work area and storage space for art portfolios and it will help ensure that our facilities meet international standards.

This is an exciting time to be part of the Cedar International School community. Working together, the faculty and staff, the Board of Trustees and the parent community will have a lasting positive impact on the education of Cedar’s students. I invite all community members to be part of that legacy.

Warm regards,