This week we have invited Sarah Ford, our Director of Student Life, to introduce us in some detail to the ISST8. Her article below invites you to read in depth about the group of eight like-minded international schools to which MIS belongs, and how the schools work together to further the international education experience for members of all eight communities.
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The History of the ISST
You may well have heard the letters ‘ISST’ mentioned at MIS before - perhaps from one of your children involved in Athletics, or in one of my SLP updates, or maybe via a Whole School Assembly. If you yourself are an alumnus or an alumna of MIS, you will surely know of the ISST, or at least of how it was ‘back then’… Let me briefly introduce you to the ISST’s history, and take you through to the present day iteration of the group - now called ‘ISST8’ and encompassing Athletics, yes, but much more too!
The ISST stands for ‘International School Sports Tournament’ and its first official sports championship took place in Zurich in 1968. That year, inaugural member schools brought their students together for boys to play football (soccer) and girls to play volleyball. At its largest, the ISST consisted of 23 member schools. Together, the Athletic Directors from these schools agreed on a shared sporting calendar, decided which sports would be played in which seasons, and took turns in hosting the end-of-season championships for whichever of the sports their school’s facilities could accommodate. The ISST enjoyed its 50th anniversary of sporting endeavours in the 2018-2019 school year.
As we can tell from the name, then, and from this potted history, the ISST was for many years all about Athletics. Teams of students would travel to different member schools to play both friendly games and end-of-season championships. For most of those years, the teams were hosted on a ‘housing’ basis - rather like a school hospitality exchange, where student athletes would enjoy staying overnight in their competitors' houses, and athletes' parents were expected to play their part in regularly hosting visiting students from guest schools. Athletes and coaches alike have fond memories of ‘the housing days’, and many believe that this homestay aspect was a fundamental part of the ISST experience, to which the hotel stays of today simply do not measure up. Hotels are nice, but in some ways they are no match for making new friends, sharing stories over breakfast, and getting to know students just like yourself in other schools in other cities - giving you an ISST network for life.
To learn more about how the ISST used to be, you can visit the organisation’s website https://www.isst-sports.org/history and read more.
ISST as we know it: the Athletics Conference
In recent years, the ISST has come to look rather different. The ISST currently has eight member schools, which are:
The Athletic Directors & Coordinators of these eight schools continue to work together to create unifying and memorable competitive sports experiences for the students in their schools. They run a three-season sports conference, which all member schools must commit to operating, and is as follows:
Certain ISST schools also field teams in more specialised sports such as baseball, softball and rugby, but the sports listed above are those to which all eight schools commit to offering.
ISST in 2026 and beyond: the ISST8!
Since 2023, the ISST has broadened its focus to look beyond Athletics. To respect the athletic tradition, yet signify a change, we now refer to the ‘ISST8’. The addition of the number eight to the name both cements the membership of the current school and shows that when we refer to the new name, we refer also to collaborations, including and beyond athletics.
From this year onwards, the ISST8 has adopted three important words to guide its work: ‘Connect, create, compete’. These three words describe the focus of our efforts to collaborate among the eight schools: to connect students, colleagues and families; to provide opportunities for students to create artwork, shows, plays and much more across the eight schools; and to continue developing students' abilities to compete in their areas of interest - be that sports, music, robotics, chess or anything else besides - and to learn and grow from all that this competition brings.
What does MIS contribute, and how do we benefit?
MIS continues to play an active role in the ISST Athletics Conference. Like all member schools, we host Championships in most seasons, and in particular, we currently look forward to the 29-30 May 2026 when we proudly host the ISST Track & Field Championships on campus! Furthermore, we host the annual ISST8 Photography Competition, and we have networked several of our student groups with the other member schools. Our collective focus for this and next school year is to build links between Student Voice & Agency groups in all the schools, in particular between our respective Student Councils, so that MIS students can learn from, and exchange experience with, those involved in similar endeavours across all of Europe.
Colleagues from MIS are also collaborating with and learning from their counterparts in other ISST8 schools. The ISST8 provides a hub of contacts and shared approaches for colleagues in all departments of MIS, and is becoming a vital resource to exchange ideas and drive improvement across all eight member schools. Indeed, the eight Heads of School meet together to share common practice and learn from the different - and in many areas, similar! - situation across their schools.
You might have heard recently that even the Alumni networks are connected- last week, 120 alumni from across the eight schools came together in London for an evening of conversation and exchanging of fond ISST memories.
How is the ISST8 organised?
Each school has an ISST8 Lead - at MIS, I take on the responsibility for championing this work. I connect monthly with the ISST8 Leads in the other school, and we update each other on which groups are now connected, which students are travelling where, and what new ideas have been put forward by members of each community for potential future collaborations. We hope that we can keep connecting our colleagues in different disciplines across the eight schools, so that our students have ever greater access to their counterparts across Europe - in this way, we can connect our young people for life, so that wherever they go, they may find an ISST8 contact for a drink, a catch-up and maybe a spot of reminiscing about their international school days.
If you would like to learn more about the ISST8 and its work, I would be happy to hear from you at sford@mis.munich.de.