ACS International School Cobham

The power of partnerships and community: ACS International School Cobham’s work to be the best for the world ACS International School Cobham, an independent school in Cobham, Surrey, UK, is a shining example of what it truly means to make a difference in the lives of others. Through their exceptional partnerships, outreach programmes, and charitable endeavours – and most impressively with their STEAM 2022 project bringing together thousands of students in the wider community through gamified learning at a theme park – the school is working for the betterment of all.

ACS International School Cobham is part of the ACS International Schools group. The ACS group itself became a registered charity in 2018 with a view of collaborating with other schools and communities to enrich everyone’s education by sharing expertise and resources. The partnerships model is free to all schools in the network and provides access to facilities, expertise and other benefits such as counselling, financial and legal advice, teacher CPD and more.

In response to ACS Cobham’s community's request for STEM education, the school developed its STEAM 2022 project. After months of planning and collaboration, the school hosted an event at Thorpe Park in Surrey, bringing together 75 partners, including The Queens Colours Squadron, The RAF, The Mercedes F1 team, and many more. The event attracted 10,000 state school children, free of charge.

The school’s charity partners helped ensure that the event was as inclusive as possible, working with UTCAI to bring inner city children, Inner Wings to engage girls, special schools to accommodate SEND students, Meru to work with disabled children, children's hospices, and various links with the refugee communities.

To gamify the event, the school created an approach where all educational content was linked to curriculum content, and students had to complete educational experiences to gather 'stamps.' Once they had collected five stamps, they gained access to the roller coasters. This approach allowed the school to capture important evaluative data on who did what, their gender, age, and demographic. In total, the day logged a total of 51,318 hours, as well as 42,765 hours of learning before the event with resources we had provided.

If ACS International School Cobham wins the World's Best School Prize for Community Collaboration, it intends to provide partner schools’ reading and writing programmes with free book vending machines and outdoor library sheds. It sees this project helping dramatically with getting the region back on track after the pandemic.