After more than twenty years leading schools across nine countries, I've learnt that great schools are rarely defined by buildings or examination results. They are defined by people, culture and the relationships that shape every child's experience.
By Mark Symmonds
Founding Head of Pre-Prep | Rugby School Hanoi
📍 Hanoi, Vietnam
📅 Published: 20 July 2026
⏱ 18 minutes read
Key Takeaways
Discover the qualities that great schools share across nine countries.
Learn why culture matters more than buildings or budgets.
See how small leadership decisions shape children's lives.
Explore why relationships are at the heart of exceptional schools.
Reflect on practical lessons you can apply in your own school.
After working in schools across England, Thailand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Armenia, Panama, Argentina and now Vietnam, I've discovered something surprising.
After more than twenty years working in schools across England, Thailand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Armenia, Panama, Argentina and now Vietnam, I've discovered something surprising.
Great schools rarely look the same.
Some have world-class sports facilities.
Others have modest classrooms.
Some are surrounded by skyscrapers.
Others overlook mountains, rice fields or busy city streets.
Some follow the English National Curriculum.
Others teach the IB, are bilingual or combine several approaches.
Yet the schools that stay with you long after you leave share remarkably similar characteristics.
They understand something that transcends curriculum, culture and geography.
They understand people.
One of the moments that has stayed with me throughout my career happened in a Year 1 classroom in Thailand.
There was a little boy who refused to write. Picking up a pencil and writing was not something he was ever going to do no matter what we tried.
Every literacy lesson followed the same pattern. He would avoid picking up his pencil, stare out of the window or insist he had nothing to write. I used all the creative tools in my teaching toolkit. It would have been easy to conclude that writing simply wasn't for him.
Instead, we changed our approach.
Rather than beginning with paper and pencils, we introduced Talk for Writing. We acted out stories, told them aloud, created actions and encouraged children to rehearse their ideas before writing them down.
Everything changed.
His imagination suddenly had somewhere to go. One day he proudly handed me his first independently written story. I can still remember reading it.
It wasn't perfect.
The spelling wasn't perfect.
The structure wasn't perfect.
But none of that mattered.
For the first time, he believed he was a writer. I can still picture him proudly handing me that exercise book. That small moment taught me something I have since seen repeated in every country where I have worked.
Children rarely need someone to lower expectations.
They need adults willing to believe in them before they believe in themselves.
One of the greatest lessons I have learnt is that there is almost always another way. If one approach doesn't work, try another. If a child doesn't respond today, don't assume they won't respond tomorrow.
Every child learns differently, develops at a different pace and brings their own strengths, interests and experiences into the classroom.
The responsibility is not to keep asking, 'Why can't this child learn?' but rather, 'What haven't we tried yet?'
After working in nine countries, I have become convinced that almost every child is capable of achieving far more than we first imagine. Sometimes they simply need someone willing to keep searching until they find the approach that unlocks their potential. To not give up on them.
Sometimes that key is a different teaching strategy.
Sometimes it is encouragement.
Sometimes it is patience.
Sometimes it is giving a child the confidence to believe in themselves.
This isn't simply an optimistic belief. Decades of educational research suggest that the expectations adults hold can shape children's outcomes.
One of the best-known studies, Pygmalion in the Classroom by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, found that when teachers believed certain pupils were likely to flourish, those children often went on to make greater progress. Although aspects of the original study have since been debated, the central message has been reinforced repeatedly: what adults believe about children matters.
If you'd like to read the original study, you can download it here.
That doesn't mean believing alone is enough.
Belief must be followed by action.
Great teachers don't simply hope children will succeed. They adapt. They encourage. They reflect. They keep looking for another way.
Great schools never stop looking for that key.
Over the past twenty years, I have been fortunate to teach, lead and learn in schools across England, Vietnam, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Brazil, Armenia, Panama and Argentina.
Each country introduced me to different cultures, different curricula, different communities and different ways of thinking about education. My most recent experience, leading in Argentina before moving to Vietnam, reinforced many of the lessons I share in this article.
Some lessons challenged what I thought I knew.
Others simply confirmed that, no matter where we are in the world, the fundamentals of great education remain remarkably consistent.
Looking back, there are nine lessons that have shaped my understanding of what truly makes a great school.
The first is perhaps the most important of all.
Before I started working internationally, I assumed children would be very different from one country to the next.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
The truth is...
Whether I was teaching in England, Singapore, Brazil or Argentina, children wanted remarkably similar things.
They wanted to feel safe.
They wanted to be noticed.
They wanted someone to listen to the seventy-ninth question they had asked that morning with the same enthusiasm as the first.
They wanted teachers who celebrated their successes and stood beside them when things became difficult.
Languages changed. Cultures changed. School uniforms changed.
The children didn't.
One lesson has surprised me more than any other.
People remember the smallest things.
A greeting each morning.
Stopping for a conversation.
Learning a parent's name.
Thanking a teaching assistant.
As leaders, we often assume people remember our speeches or staff meetings or grand ideas. More often, they remember how we made them feel.
One of the most meaningful notes I have ever received came from a child in Argentina.
It simply said:
'Thank you for saying good morning to me every morning.'
No mention of lessons.
No mention of grades.
Just two words.
Good morning.
During my career I've worked with different curricula. Different assessment systems. Different behaviour policies. Different educational philosophies. None has been as powerful as genuine relationships.
A child who knows their teacher believes in them will often achieve far more than one experiencing the ‘perfect’ curriculum without that connection.
The same is true for adults.
Teachers don't simply stay because of salary.
They stay because they feel valued.
Because they are trusted.
Because somebody notices when they're having a difficult week.
Schools are built by people.
Not policies.
Before working internationally, I assumed parents around the world would all want different things.
In many ways they do.
Every culture has different expectations of schools.
Some parents are highly involved.
Some prefer schools to lead.
Some see schools as communities where lifelong friendships begin.
Others primarily value academic success.
Yet beneath those differences lies something remarkably simple.
Parents want to know that you genuinely know their child. That you care.
That if something goes wrong, you'll pick up the phone before rumours begin. That you'll work with them rather than against them.
I remember a parent in Brazil who was concerned that her son wasn't being challenged in mathematics.
Rather than simply reassuring her that everything was fine, I invited her into school. We sat together and looked at how mathematics was taught, discussing differentiation and how children are challenged in different ways depending on their understanding and next steps.
By opening the classroom door and explaining the thinking behind our approach, her concerns quickly became confidence. That conversation reminded me that parents don't expect teachers to have all the answers, they appreciate being helped to understand how and why decisions are made.
Schools sometimes underestimate how much trust is built through small moments of communication such as those I have described.
Parents understand that schools are made up of people.
What they value most is honesty, openness and the confidence that, when challenges arise, the school will work with them rather than around them.
One of the most important leadership lessons I learnt in Brazil is something I will carry throughout the rest of my career.
The most valuable expertise in an international school isn't always imported.
Local staff, teaching assistants, office staff and support teams understand the culture, language and community in ways expatriate staff simply cannot.
The strongest international schools don't create two separate teams.
They create one community.
I've already seen that same strength here in Vietnam.
When local expertise and international perspectives genuinely come together, schools become richer places for everyone.
Earlier in my career, I thought leaders needed to have all the answers.
Experience has taught me something different.
The best leaders ask better questions.
Every school has its own story.
Its own culture.
Its own traditions.
Its own challenges.
Walking into a new school and immediately changing everything rarely ends well. The best leaders spend far longer listening than most new leaders find comfortable. That can feel incredibly difficult.
As leaders, we often arrive feeling that we should be doing something. After all, we've been appointed because people expect us to make a difference. The temptation is to introduce new initiatives, change systems and solve problems before we've fully understood why things are the way they are.
Yet every school has its own history, traditions, relationships and culture. Those things cannot be understood in a few weeks.
Some of the best leadership advice I have ever received was simple: don't confuse activity with progress.
Listening is not the absence of leadership.
It is leadership.
The conversations you have in those first few months will often shape the next few years.
Looking back, some of the changes I am most pleased with were not the ones I made quickly, but the ones I made only after taking the time to understand the people, the context and the reasons behind existing practice.
Understanding before improving.
Context matters.
That remains one of the hardest lessons to practise and one I continue to remind myself of today.
One of the biggest differences between good schools and exceptional schools isn't money.
It isn't buildings or facilities.
It isn't examination results.
It's clarity.
The very best schools have a clear sense of identity. They know what they believe about children. They know what they value.
They understand the kind of people they are trying to develop, and those beliefs influence everything from recruitment and curriculum to behaviour and relationships.
Some schools are academically ambitious.
Others are renowned for sport, the arts or outdoor education.
Many combine several strengths.
The point isn't what they prioritise.
The point is that everyone understands why.
When a school's values genuinely shape its daily decisions, families know what to expect, staff know what they are working towards and children experience consistency.
In my experience, schools struggle not because they try to do too much, but because they lose sight of who they are.
Great schools don't try to copy everyone else.
They become the very best version of themselves.
I once taught a boy in Brazil whose behaviour had gradually become his identity.
Adults expected problems. His classmates expected disruption. Eventually, he began to expect it too.
It would have been easy to focus only on the behaviour. Instead, we tried to look beyond it.
Rather than asking, 'What is wrong with him?' we began asking a different question:
'What is he capable of becoming?'
That small shift changed everything.
We looked for opportunities to help him succeed, deliberately focusing on his strengths rather than his struggles. We celebrated the smallest victories, gave him responsibilities and created opportunities for him to experience success both inside and outside the classroom.
As those successes became more frequent, the negative interactions that had once dominated his school day began to decline.
Slowly, his confidence grew.
He discovered a love of mathematics. He performed brilliantly in the Christmas production. The behaviour that had once defined him became just one small part of who he was.
One day, his mother asked if she could meet with me.
As we sat down, she looked at me and asked,
'What have you done to my son?'
I will admit, there was a brief moment of panic.
Then she smiled.
'He loves maths now.'
I smiled too, relieved.
The answer was not a new programme, an expensive intervention or a revolutionary teaching strategy. It was belief.
Not blind optimism. Not lowered expectations.
Simply the unwavering belief that he was capable of more than his behaviour had led others to expect.
Too often, we judge children by where they are today rather than by who they might become tomorrow.
The greatest teachers and school leaders I've worked alongside have always looked beyond the present moment. They see strengths before they are obvious, potential before it is realised and possibilities where others see limitations.
Believing in a child doesn't mean ignoring the challenges they face.
It means refusing to believe those challenges will define the rest of their story.
Because sometimes the most important thing we can give a child isn't another task, another intervention or another target.
Sometimes it's the unwavering belief that they are capable of far more than they currently believe themselves.
And when enough adults share that belief, extraordinary things begin to happen.
I've come to realise that this isn't just true for children.
It's true for adults too.
As school leaders, one of our greatest responsibilities is to help our teams see that they are capable of far more than they currently believe in themselves.
Early in my career in the UAE, I worked for a leader who saw something in me that I couldn't yet see in myself. He trusted me with opportunities that felt beyond my experience and encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone.
Looking back, I realise he wasn't simply developing my leadership skills. He was helping me rewrite my own story about what I was capable of.
I don't know if he will ever realise just how much that belief changed the course of my career.
That experience has stayed with me ever since.
If believing in one child can change a life, perhaps believing in one teacher can change hundreds more.
Teachers rarely know the long-term impact of what they do.
While teaching a Year 4 PYP inquiry unit about space in Singapore, I hoped the children would leave with a sense of curiosity and wonder about the universe, just as I have always had about all things space.
Several years later, I received a message from the mother of one of the children in that class. She told me that her son had chosen to study Aerospace Engineering at the University of Manchester because that Year 4 inquiry had sparked a lifelong fascination with space.
I was genuinely taken aback.
It was a powerful reminder that we rarely know which lesson, conversation or experience will stay with a child long after they leave our classroom.
There is a common perception that secondary teachers have the greatest influence because they work with students at pivotal moments in their lives. My experience has taught me something different.
Even the youngest children can carry a moment, a conversation or a spark of curiosity with them for years. As primary and Early Years educators, we are often laying foundations that will not become visible until much later.
The seeds we plant today may not become visible until many years later.
I was reminded of this again when a former Year 3 pupil from Brazil wrote her university application essay about the person who had most influenced her life outside her own family. To my complete surprise, she chose to write about me. Reading those words genuinely brought a tear to my eye.
It certainly wasn’t because every lesson I taught had been extraordinary.
It wasn’t because I always had the perfect answer.
It was because, years earlier, we had built a relationship.
That experience reinforced something I have come to believe deeply: children rarely remember every activity, every spelling test or every learning objective. What they do remember is how the adults in their lives made them feel.
Relationships always matter.
Far more than we sometimes realise.
Looking back across more than twenty years, nine countries, thousands of children and hundreds of colleagues, I haven't found a perfect school.
I don't think one exists.
What I have found are schools filled with dedicated people who choose, every day, to make a difference.
The buildings matter.
The curriculum matters.
Leadership matters.
But none of them matter as much as the people who bring them to life.
Because great schools are never built by programmes alone.
They are built by relationships.
Children may not remember every lesson we teach.
But they almost always remember how we made them feel.
After more than twenty years and nine countries, I still can't think of a better definition of a great school than a place where people leave feeling they mattered.
🧭 Leadership Reflection
🎯 If someone visited your school for just one day, what would they remember long after they had forgotten the buildings, displays and examination results?
Would they remember:
Children who felt known?
Staff who felt valued?
Parents who felt welcomed?
A culture that reflected your values every day?
If not, where could you begin?
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About the Author
Mark Symmonds
Founding Head of Pre-Prep | Rugby School Hanoi
International School Leader | British & International Early Years and Primary Education
Mark Symmonds has more than twenty years' experience leading British and international Early Years and Primary education across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. He writes about child development, school leadership and British education, with a particular focus on exceptional teaching, strong character and creating school communities where children flourish.
Explore more from Mark: Leadership Philosophy | Education Insights | Leadership in Practice