International School of Geneva (Ecolint)

Positives

• Academic standing. IB diploma averages hold in the mid-30s across all three campuses (35.4 to 35.6 in 2025), with pass rates between 94 and 99 percent. The link to the IB Organisation runs deep; Ecolint wrote the original programme and still shapes how it evolves. Strong onward placement to UK, US and continental universities.
• Teaching quality and pedagogy. Non-profit status, higher teacher pay than the for-profit competition in Geneva, and lower staff turnover. The school attracts experienced IB teachers from around the world. Former teachers describe it as among the strongest IB practitioners anywhere.
• Diversity and community fit. Genuinely international intake. Campus des Nations skews UN and embassy families; La Grande Boissière carries a more established, posher feel; La Châtaigneraie sits in the Vaud countryside near Founex with a more residential, lake-and-forest character. Families coming through international postings tend to slot in easily.
• Campus setting and facilities. Three very different sites. La Grande Boissière mixes an 18th-century château with newer buildings including a modern arts centre. La Châtaigneraie sits on open ground with lake and Alps views. Campus des Nations has a sheltered early-years site at Pregny that parents speak warmly of.

Considerations

• Governance and stability. Significant turbulence at board level. Four governing board members, including the president and vice-president, resigned in May 2025, on top of more than a dozen resignations across the foundation council over two years. The staff association launched a petition citing a lack of transparency and meetings increasingly held behind closed doors; it collected 250 signatures in 24 hours. The future of the collective labour agreement sits at the centre of the tension.
• Scale and pastoral consistency. Three campuses and roughly 4,500 students mean experiences vary widely. Parents at Campus des Nations and at Florimont-comparable years tend to describe a supportive environment; some older alumni describe a much harder time, with isolated but serious accounts of bullying, drug use in the upper years at La Grande Boissière, and patchy support for students who struggle. Reputation by campus differs more than the single Ecolint brand suggests.
• Fees and value. Annual tuition runs from around CHF 19,800 at the youngest ages to around CHF 35,500 at the top of the school, with a CHF 2,500 registration fee and a one-off CHF 4,000 capital development fee. Ecolint cut tuition by 1 percent from September 2025, its first reduction in a long stretch, framed as a response to USAID and UN budget cuts hitting international civil servant families. Even with the cut, fees sit in the top band for Geneva.
• Location and commute. La Châtaigneraie is not in Geneva at all; it sits in Founex, in Canton Vaud, and effectively requires a car for the families who use it. Campus des Nations is convenient for the UN quarter and the train. La Grande Boissière is in the city. The school is too geographically spread to think of as a single commute decision.
• Safety incident. A 15-year-old student died on an Ecolint extracurricular outing in the Romainmôtier forest in Vaud in June 2025, struck by a falling branch during bad weather. The school provided psychological support to the community and declined to comment further citing the family's privacy and ongoing investigations. Press coverage in Geneva was extensive.