Admissions

Academic Integrity and IST’s mission and vision

Academic integrity is an essential part of IST’s mission. It creates a common ground on which to work in an academic setting. Through the discipline involved and the resulting pride in a student’s own work, it helps to build character. It protects student’s own work and makes that work more relevant. And it is important for our students’ further learning and professional lives.

Academic integrity is “a choice to act in a responsible way whereby others can have trust in us as individuals. It is the foundation for ethical decision-making and behaviour in the production of legitimate, authentic and honest scholarly work” (International Baccalaureate, 2019, p.3). As such, academic integrity is not ‘only’ a part of a school’s policies, or a set of rules, it should be a part of a school’s culture. We are all responsible for doing our part, and for supporting each other in the practice of academic integrity.

Academic integrity is important for different reasons:

  • First of all, it helps to develop respect for others and for yourself. Everybody has a right to be proud of the work they have done and of the ideas they have come up with. People want to be seen and acknowledged for who they are. Therefore, it is only fair to give credit to those who have made something that we can use and build on. When we are honest about our sources and collaboration, we can be honestly proud of our own work.
  • Secondly, academic integrity creates a level playing field for students. Only when everybody works within the same set of rules, can we assess the student’s achievement. This concerns both assessment within IST, as assessment by other bodies, such as  CAIE or IB.
  • Thirdly, in order to maintain the value and validity of a diploma, other organizations such as universities must be certain that this diploma is an honest reflection of the student’s abilities.

At IST, we support students in developing and maintaining academic integrity. It is an often-discussed topic in class, we give practice assignments for referencing and we support students in planning and time management, since we know that bad planning and stress are typical causes for academic misconduct.

Because academic integrity is so important to us and to our students’ future success, we want to emphasize this by asking all our new students and their parents in secondary school to agree with IST’s Academic Integrity Policy. This policy can be found on our website.