Accreditation & Ofsted
We are accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA) and certified by Ofsted. ASL is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools, the Council of International Schools, the Independent Schools Association (ISA), and the Association for the Advancement of International Education (AAIE). ASL has been accredited by MSA for several decades and by the Department for Education (DfE) since 2006.
- MSA ensures that we maintain a high level of US and international school educational standards and informs universities of the quality of our students’ educational experience; emphasizes continuous improvement; it is a non-profit organization; inspections are conducted by fellow educators from schools who volunteer for accreditation visits; and MSA awards a term of accreditation (a maximum of seven years). ASL’s last MSA accreditation visit was in 2016, and we were awarded the full term of seven years. We will write our report for MSA by June of this school year, and the accreditation visit will be in November 2023.
- Ofsted inspects non-association independent schools at the direction of the Department for Education (DfE), which is the registration authority for all independent schools in England. Ofsted inspects and regulates schools with the intent of improving the lives of children in England and provides a school’s license to operate in this country; its objectives are compliance and regulation; it is a department of His Majesty’s Government; inspections are conducted by government educational officials; and its inspectors provide a rating for schools and conduct inspections every 2-3 years, although more often if warranted.
- Both organizations use data from community surveys as part of the assessment of a school’s effectiveness. Also, each organization has a set of standards that must be met: eight standards for DfE and five standards for MSA. And, while Ofsted and MSA rely upon a checklist of standards with which schools must comply, MSA also requires schools to create an action plan for continuous improvement between visits.
- The ISA is the registered charity that represents the Heads of 608 of the UK’s best independent schools. The Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) is appointed by the DfE to inspect association independent schools in England. ISI inspects ISA member schools including our peer schools such as Eton, Harrow, Sevenoaks, and St. Paul’s.
- The DfE approves inspections from either Ofsted or the ISI, and both Ofsted and the ISI use the same eight standards for independent school assessment. ASL is now a member of ISA, but our next inspection will be with Ofsted.
- We met all expectations during our progress monitoring visit from Ofsted in October 2022. We await our next inspection, sometime in the next 18-24 months, when our Ofsted rating will be reviewed.
Use the buttons below to download our accreditation reports.
Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools: January 2020
Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools: 2016
Our K1 reggio-inspired program is exempt from Ofsted's Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Learning and Development Requirements.