International schools as 'institutions' and the issue of 'legitimacy'

There is no denying that the number of transnational spaces of education (Hayden, 2011) being classified as ‘International Schools’ has grown enormously over the past two decades (Brummitt, 2007; Brummit and Keeling, 2013). Delegates at the Alliance for International Education World Conference in Bangkok in February 2016 were informed that the host city now has over one hundred ‘International Schools’, compared to having only a handful in the 1990s. This paper is based upon a presentation given at that conference. It has been reported (Gaskell, 2016 p.24) that the past 16 years has seen a ‘staggering growth’ in the number of schools worldwide being classified as ‘International Schools’, and the ‘market continues to expand at pace.’ The size of this growth, and the underpinning demand for ‘International Schools’, were largely unforeseen (Hallgarten et al, 2015).