School internationalization is the process of bringing an international element into a school’s curriculum, staff, research activities and operations, in a deliberate and measurable way. It is not a single event, nor a memorandum of cooperation signed and then filed away. In practical work with schools in Vietnam, the M2W team has found that most difficulties lie not in finding a foreign partner, but in the school not yet having clearly defined what it wants to achieve.
This article is for school leadership, international cooperation offices, and units preparing to enter the first stage.
What does school internationalization include?
There are four pillars commonly cited when discussing school internationalization. They are not separate from one another, but distinguishing them helps your school know where it is strong and where it is lacking.
The first pillar is the curriculum. Whether teaching content references international standards, whether any modules are taught in a foreign language, whether learning outcomes are comparable to those of foreign schools. This is the heaviest pillar in terms of expertise and also the slowest to show results.
The second pillar is people. This includes teachers’ foreign language and intercultural competence, the administrative team’s experience working with foreign partners, and students’ ability to function in a multicultural environment.
The third pillar is partnerships. School-to-school cooperation, exchange programs, co-organized conferences, joint research. This is the most visible pillar, so it is also easily mistaken for the whole story.
The fourth pillar is operations. An English-language capability profile, the process for receiving international students, how data is stored, how long it takes to answer an inquiry from abroad. This pillar gets talked about the least but actually determines whether a partnership survives past the first year.
Why starting with an MOU usually does not work
Many schools begin the internationalization process by signing a memorandum of understanding. The reason is understandable: an MOU is visible, reportable, and usually costs nothing directly at the time of signing.
The problem is that a memorandum does not generate activity on its own. Right after the signing ceremony, practical questions appear immediately: who is the point of contact on each side, what is the first activity, which semester will it take place in, where does the budget come from, who is responsible for reporting. If the four pillars above are not yet in place, no one has answers to these questions.
The common result is a growing list of MOUs year after year while the number of actual activities stays flat. In terms of external relations, this is also a disadvantage: a potential partner school, when checking, will see that the school has many relationships but no joint output to show for them.
Where to start: three things for the first year
The first task: write the goal as a declarative statement
An internationalization goal must be specific enough that an outsider reading it understands it. “Improving education quality toward integration” is not a goal, it is a slogan.
A usable goal would look like: over the next two academic years, the school will develop three modules taught in English for grades 10 and 11, delivered by in-house teachers, with learning outcomes referencing the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
That statement specifies what, for whom, over what period, by whom, and how it is measured. From a statement like this, budget and staffing can then be derived.
The second task: take stock of what already exists
Before looking for a partner, the school needs to know what it already has in hand. A minimum inventory should answer:
- How many teachers can work in English at a professional discussion level, not just basic conversation?
- Does the school already have an English-language capability profile, and when was it last updated?
- Does the website have an English version, and does that version contain enough information for a foreign school to evaluate, or just an introduction?
- Who actually answers inquiries from abroad, and how long does it take?
- What was the budget for international activities in the past academic year, and where was it spent?
This inventory often produces surprises. Many schools discover they have enough teachers but no one assigned as the point of contact, or have an English profile that is already three years out of date.
The third task: pick one small activity and see it through
Rather than opening five directions at once, the school should pick exactly one activity that can be completed within a single semester. A joint online seminar with a class abroad. A shared learning project lasting six weeks. A shared methodology session between two professional groups.
The value of a small activity lies not in its scale but in the fact that it forces the machinery to actually run: someone must coordinate, a schedule must be set, time zone differences must be handled, a report must be written afterward. This is exactly the operational part that no document can teach in its place.
The first activity should also be chosen for how easily it can recover if something goes wrong. An online session cancelled due to a technical glitch can be rescheduled to the following week with no harm done. A student trip abroad running into trouble has very different consequences, both financially and for the school’s reputation with parents.
After the activity ends, the school should hold a debrief within a week, while everyone still remembers the details. This meeting need not be long, but should have someone taking minutes and should answer three questions: what went as planned, what deviated, and what to change next time.
How to measure the effectiveness of school internationalization
The number of MOUs is the easiest metric to count and also the least meaningful. A usable set of metrics generally consists of three groups.
The activity group counts what actually took place: the number of joint activities completed in the year, the number of teachers and students involved, the number of modules with an international element incorporated into teaching.
The capability group measures internal change: the number of teachers reaching the set foreign-language threshold, the number of staff who have led at least one international activity, the average response time for inquiries from partners.
The sustainability group answer the most important question: how many partnerships are still active after two years. One partnership that generates regular activity is worth more than ten that exist only on paper.
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publishes international education policy analyses that schools can consult when building their own indicator framework.
A note on how to use indicators. A set of indicators is only useful when it is locked in at the start of the school year and its definitions are kept unchanged throughout the measurement period. If the way “joint activity” is counted changes midyear, the two years’ figures will not be comparable and the entire data-collection effort becomes meaningless.
Indicators used for external reporting should also be kept separate from indicators used for internal management. External indicators need to be easy for outsiders to understand. Internal indicators can be more detailed, including numbers that are not flattering, because those are exactly what helps leadership see where things are stuck.
Recurring mistakes
Handing everything to one individual. When that person leaves or transfers, the entire partnership goes with them. All correspondence should go through the school’s shared mailbox and be kept on file.
Machine-translating documents and sending them as is. A capability profile with technical terminology errors will damage credibility right at the first point of contact. The cost of proofreading is always smaller than the cost of losing an opportunity.
Setting targets by number of partners. A target of “sign five more MOUs this year” almost always leads to signing just enough to hit the number.
Ignoring differences in academic calendars. Schools in the Southern Hemisphere start their academic year in January or February, while schools in Europe and North America start in September. A shared plan that does not account for this will break down at the scheduling stage.
Not preparing for degree recognition. If the cooperation involves credit transfer or recognition of learning outcomes, the legal framework needs to be researched from the outset. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) there is a global convention on the recognition of higher education qualifications, which is a reasonable starting point for this part.
Treating internationalization as solely the international cooperation office’s job. If academic departments do not participate, all activity will stay at the level of exchange visits. The part with lasting value lies in curriculum and teaching methods, and those fall under the authority of academic departments, not the cooperation office.
Not keeping any record after each activity. A short minute noting what was done, who took part, what worked and what did not, takes about thirty minutes to write. Without it, the school starts from zero again the following year, even with the same partner.
The role of an intermediary platform
Once a school has set its goals and completed an inventory, finding partners becomes an information problem: which partners are a good fit, whether the information about them is reliable, and when it was last updated.
M2W Edu was built to solve this part. School profiles on the platform clearly state the source of each piece of information and the date it was verified, so readers know whether the figure they are viewing is still valid. The platform does not make partnership decisions on the school’s behalf, nor does it perform the advising work of an enrollment partner. This boundary is kept deliberately.
Summary
Internationalizing a school is a long-term undertaking, and the hardest part comes at the start, when there is nothing yet to show. The logical order is: write specific goals, take stock of existing capabilities, choose one small activity and complete it, then expand the partnership.
A memorandum of understanding should be the result of a process that already has substance, not the starting point.
Next Steps
If your school is at the inventory stage, start with exactly one table: list what the school already has, noting the most recent update date for each item. That table is the foundation for every step that follows.
The M2W team works with schools at this stage. You can get in touch via the Solutions page to discuss specifics.
