Welcome to Campus des Nations Secondary School
Jamie Williams - Principal
Sharing our modern building with Primary learners, our school has high academic standards, reflected in our strong examination results. It is also fully inclusive and strives to meet the needs of all of our students, providing learning support, as well as English as an additional language. Through community service, humanitarian work, educational visits and trips both within Switzerland and worldwide, our students develop not only a love of learning, but also the skills they need to become responsible global citizens.
- 600 students, aged 11 to 18 years
- International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme, Career-related Programme and Diploma Programme
- English-language teaching, complemented by French classes and francophone teachers for selected subjects (see brochure)
- Extensive extra-curricular programme
- Cafeteria and bus service
- School hours Monday to Friday: 8.10 – 15:30 (Year 12-13: 8:10 to 16:15)
- Extended Support Programme for students with moderate to severe learning difficulties (limited places)
Quick Facts
Below are just a few of the reasons we are proud of our school and our school community.
Please pay us a visit to find out more!
Enhancing the World Through Design
At the Campus des Nations Secondary School, students are privileged to have four extremely dynamic teachers of design, each with a specific technical background: natural product design, electronics and computers, computer science and engineering. But above all, they have the opportunity to express their creativity in more than just artistic ways.
For when does design ever end? Endless and timeless, the teaching of design is also ever changing, as new products and technologies are always coming out that enrich our daily lives. In fact, one of the goals the Design Department sets itself is to act as the provider and representative of technological culture for the school, as evidenced by the design-led Dev Club, which organises regular robotics challenges.
Relying on a wide set of skills including maths, physics, chemistry and biology, design brings together these competencies to give them meaning in the specific context of product creation. Thus, based on the premise that a given product is imperfect, students follow a process whereby they identify flaws in an effort to reassess constantly how a product can be further improved.
But it’s not just technical skills that the study of design develops. It’s also human skills as students are encouraged to think about user-centred design. In other words, how a given product can be useful to its final user, with all the implications it can have beyond this. For example, one recent student-led project searched for solutions to enable Parkinson’s sufferers to paint despite their tremor.
From 3D printers to CNC milling machines, from computer coding to vector-based graphics, from laser cutters to robotics, students develop a wide variety of practical skills through individual, hands-on learning that breaks down the barriers of the traditional class formula. In fact, most classes are organised in such a way that no two students are doing the same thing. Taking ownership of what they are creating, where they’re taking it and how they’re doing it, students thus become their own leaders, with teachers acting as reassuring “guides on the sides”.
Looking to the future, the Design Department hopes to take a more active part in events and opportunities taking place in or around Geneva, such as the Mission to Mars experience with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and bring the teaching of design further away from theory and closer to practical learning.
Design is a compulsory core subject for all students in year 7 to 11 in the Middle Years Program (MYP) and can be selected as a subject by year 12 and 13 students for both the IB Diploma and IB Career-related Programme.