In Charles Dickens’ famous novel, Hard Times, it is said that students of the nineteenth century were treated like empty bottles, vacant vessels waiting to be filled with facts.

Students at IES are as varied as the seasons and as driven as the wind. The vast majority of students in a school at IES are Swedish, yet none of them are stereotypical. They are white and black and large and small. They are Christians and Muslims, they like reggae and they like rock n roll. They are, quite simply, individuals with their own integrity and their own goals.

At IES our task is to help them further formulate and achieve these goals. We guide them across hurdles, instruct them in the myriad of life’s lessons of experience, both inside and outside the class and teach them early to accept stress and focus on their strengths. We also help them to discover new strengths and talents.

What our students do have in common is an unwritten code of ethics which they abide to within the school environment. They respect themselves and each other. They recognize the school as their place of work. They do not tolerate violence and they quickly discover to use the power of words before aggression. They learn good manners and appreciate a kindly ‘thank you’ and a generous ‘please’. They embrace knowledge and have a thirst for answers and like that wind that circles and envelopes our world their strengths lay in the multi-faceted expression of the world’s global language, English.

At IES in the twenty first century we don’t just fill bottles with knowledge, we form the bottles too – in all shapes and sizes.