Academic Policies
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Academic

POLICIES

Academic Policies are formulated through discussion with Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle and High School teaching staff and administrators. They are designed to give an overview of what we believe is best practice in each area of teaching and learning, for all our age groups. All policies are approved by the Academic Board and will be reviewed regularly.

Assessment Policy

Overseas Family School sees assessment as a tool to support and promote student learning and to accurately report student achievement. We believe that students and parents are entitled to consistent, valid and reliable assessment information across all grades, subjects and classes.

Overseas Family School therefore:

  • Ensures that teachers, students and parents are well informed as to how student work is to be assessed.
  • Maintains detailed assessment records and uses these to provide valid student achievement information to students and parents, both ongoing and at times of formal reporting.
  • Uses a range of tools for assessment, selecting practices that best promote student learning.
  • Structures assessments to allow all students to demonstrate their personal level of achievement and progress.
  • Implements procedures at all levels and in all subjects, to standardise assessment grading.
  • Uses independent assessment to ensure validity of data for student tracking and reporting and also for further curriculum planning and delivery.
  • Values individual student assessment data and adapts classroom teaching and planning processes in response to the data.

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Language Policy

Overseas Family School strives to provide an optimal language learning environment so that students can develop their full potential in English, a foreign language and their mother tongue.

Overseas Family School therefore:

  • Implements effective English language programs and foreign language programs based on current research and best practice.
  • Provides motivating and engaging language learning experiences where students can enhance their self-esteem and confidence through language learning.
  • Provides additional intensive language support for students from Grades 1-12 who need to rapidly improve their English through the Study Preparation Program.
    Learn more about our Study Preparation Program
  • Requires all mainstream students, from a very young age through to Grade 12, to learn a foreign language, as early foreign language learning is important for language acquisition skills throughout life.
  • Develops a sense of intercultural awareness and understanding in students, whilst enabling them to become proficient in speaking, listening, reading and writing in a foreign language.
  • Uses effective and valid assessment tools on a regular basis to identify the range of proficiency levels in students' English and foreign languages. This information is used to tailor language programs to specific student needs, thus enabling students to progress at their optimal rate.
  • Provides mother tongue maintenance and development programs where feasible.
    Learn more about our Mother Tongue Program

Last reviewed: June 2024

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School-wide Reading Policy

Overseas Family School continually enhances its reading environment because reading is a core, generic skill. The skill of reading is one of the most important areas of learning for a student's future success.

Overseas Family School therefore implements research-led best practice reading programs from Kindergarten through Grade 12 by:

  • Ensuring that the eleven factors that consistently predict reading achievement for early learners outlined in the US National Early Literacy Panel Report (2008) form the basis of all early years reading programs.
  • Incorporating the five essential elements of effective reading practice outlined in the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Report (2000) into all reading programs.
  • Ensuring that all programs adopt a systematic, sequential and incremental approach, where appropriate.
  • Striking a research-based balance between phonics-based instruction and literature-based instruction, where appropriate.
  • Enabling students to comprehend a wide-range of genres, with specific focus on non-fiction and reading within a variety of disciplines, where appropriate.
  • Ensuring that reading assessment benefits all students. Valid and reliable assessment data are therefore utilised to:
    • provide baseline data for each student.
    • track student progress over time.
    • tailor reading programs to a diverse range of student needs.
    • guide intervention programs and action research projects.
    • establish ongoing accountability.
  • Ensuring that relevant and challenging library/reading resources are coherently linked to all formal reading programs.

Early Literacy Skills

US National Institute of Family Literacy. (2008). "Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel: A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and its Implications for Intervention".

Strongly Correlated
Moderately Correlated

Alphabetic knowledge

Phonological awareness

Phonemic awareness

Rapid Automatic Naming of letters and digits

Rapid Automatic Naming of objects and colours

Writing, or writing one's own name

Concepts about print: knowledge about print. For example, from left to right, front- back and concepts (book, cover, author, text).

Print knowledge: a combination of elements of alphabetic knowledge, concepts about print and early decoding.

Reading readiness: usually a combination of alphabetic knowledge, concepts of print, vocabulary, memory, and phonological awareness.

Oral language: the ability to produce or comprehend spoken language, including vocabulary or grammar.

Visual processing: the ability to match or discriminate visually presented symbols.

Essential Elements of an Effective School-wide Reading Program

US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). "Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An evidence -based assessment of the scientific research literature and its implications for reading instruction". (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington DC: US Government Printing House.

  • Phonemic awareness
  • Phonics
  • Reading fluency1
  • Vocabulary development2
  • Reading comprehension3: (Core reading strategies identified through research)
Finding the Main Idea
Recalling Facts and Details
Understanding Sequence
Recognising Cause and Effect
Comparing and Contrasting
Making Predictions
Finding Word Meaning in Context
Drawing Conclusions and Making Inferences
Identifying Author's Purpose
Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion4
Interpreting Figurative Language
Summarising
  1. Key focus for MS and HS. To comprehend well, all students must achieve adequate oral reading fluency.
  2. Key focus for MS and HS. Reading comprehension depends heavily on the knowledge of individual word's meaning in text. This can be learned implicitly (through contextual clues), or by explicit teaching of vocabulary.
  3. Key focus for MS and HS. Requires comprehension skills and strategies, background knowledge and verbal reasoning. All are employed by good readers.
  4. A key focus for HS students. HS students must be able to assess the validity, reliability and dependability of multiple sources.

Inclusion Policy

OFS Master Policy is to maintain a happy, safe and effective school for overseas families living in Singapore. Overseas Family School sees inclusion as an ongoing process and strives to provide effective and quality education for every student enrolled in our school. We believe in recognising and celebrating diversity and providing equity in teaching and learning opportunities to ensure access to lifelong learning for all.

Overseas Family School therefore:

  • Promotes a happy school atmosphere which emphasises self-respect and respect for others.
  • Avoids labeling students, which can change expectations of student performance.
  • Promotes self-management and self-discipline in all active learning in the school through identification of the most effective strategies.
  • Provides an educational framework that meets the needs of all students in accordance with IB philosophy and practice.
  • Meets the specific needs of students with special abilities or learning difficulties, as far as resourcing is possible.
  • Aims to minimise any barriers to learning and participation by responding positively to each individual's unique needs.
  • Works in partnership with every student, teacher and parent to maintain high expectations and ensure that each student is a fully participating member of the school.
  • Advises parents of external professional advice available, when requested, to meet the needs of all students.
  • Implements professional development for teachers to ensure awareness of factors that impact student learning and how to maximise effective learning for all.
  • Uses effective differentiation and collaborative teaching approaches to meet individual student needs.
  • Evaluates success of provision through ongoing review of levels of student attainment and evaluation of teaching and learning programs.
  • Ensures confidentiality for all students and members of the Overseas Family School community.
  • Works in accordance with IB, local and international guidance on Inclusive Education.

Last reviewed: June 2024

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Academic Integrity Policy

The Overseas Family School (OFS) places high emphasis on academic integrity and believes it is indispensable for achieving academic excellence. We strongly believe in the practice of fair work which is a result of individual efforts following stipulated rules and conventions. Our academic integrity policy provides an opportunity to all members of the community to demonstrate IB learner profile attribute of being principled and the International Primary Curriculum of being ‘Ethical’. IB explains the learner profile 'Principled' as, ""We act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness and justice, and with respect for the dignity and rights of people everywhere. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences (IB Learner Profile)."

OFS Academic Integrity Policy

  1. Students will exhibit proper conduct in relation to conduct of examinations (including in-class assessments).
  2. Students will produce "authentic" pieces of work.

1. Conduct of examinations

The following conduct is expected:

  • Only authorised materials are brought into the examination.
  • The behaviour of each student respects the rights of others to be assessed without disruption or distraction.
  • Students complete the examination without seeking assistance from other students (copying from or communicating with other students).
  • Students complete the examination without seeking assistance from unauthorised material/notes.
  • Students will comply with the invigilator's instructions.
  • Students will make no attempt to disclose or discuss the content of an examination paper with anyone who has yet to take the examination.
  • Students will make no attempt to gain information about an examination from someone who has already taken the same examination.

2. Production of authentic work

Students are expected to follow the expectations outlined below for aspects of: Collusion, Duplication of work, Fabrication of information and Plagiarism.

Collusion: Students must not allow their work to be copied by another student. Aiding another candidate in gaining an unfair advantage is considered "collusion".

  • If a student willingly shares their work with another student, who then uses any of this work in their submission, both parties will be treated as breaching the OFS Academic Integrity policy.
  • When collaboration is involved, the final work must be produced independently; hence, the submitted piece would not be the same as the work produced by others in the collaborative group.

Duplication of work: Students must submit original work for each assessment component. Submission of very similar work for another assessment component in the same course or another course is not allowed.

Fabrication of information: Students may only submit data/records that they have collected/completed themselves, or submit information that they have gathered from a secondary source (with correct referencing included). Fabrication of data, supplying false information for CAS records, or submitting data collected by others as one's own, is not allowed.

Plagiarism: Students are expected to give credit, using Modern Language Association (MLA) referencing, when including the ideas, quotations or work(s) of another person in pieces submitted for assessment. This includes text, images, videos, digital and live presentations.

The same rule applies if students are copying or paraphrasing the text produced by an artificial intelligence (AI) or modifying an image. Students must:

  • Include in-text citation in the body of the work using Modern Language Association (MLA) referencing.
  • The citation should also contain the prompt given to the AI tool.
  • Works cited should include the date the AI generated the text.

All the above rules apply to any other material that the student has obtained from other categories of AI tools for example, images (Academic Integrity Policy).

Using software to improve language and grammar
Software programs/tools available to help authors improve the quality of the language they use, from simple spell checkers to complex tools that rewrite sentences are not permitted in language acquisition, where marks are awarded for sentence structure.

IB assessments usually do not evaluate the quality of language or spelling so there is limited benefit in using such tools for any other subject (Academic Integrity Policy).

To claim work created by another human or an AI as your own is considered a breach of academic integrity.

OFS Academic Integrity Responsibilities

Teacher Responsibilities
Teachers are responsible for:

  • Teaching and modeling appropriate academic integrity practices.

Parent Responsibilities

  • Parents are expected to have read, understand and support the OFS Academic Integrity Policy.

Student Responsibilities

  • Students are expected to have read and adhere to the OFS Academic Integrity Policy and to approach their class teachers for clarification whenever they are uncertain about academic integrity expectations.

Consequences
The consequences differ based on age of students, school they are in and type of academic integrity breach. Kindly refer to the specific school's student handbook on the consequences of academic misconduct.

Right of Appeal
A student is allowed to appeal a breach of academic integrity decision by contacting the relevant principal. Kindly refer to the specific school’s student handbook for details.

Last reviewed: June 2024

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Works Cited
Academic Integrity Policy. International Baccalaureate, 2019.
IB Learner Profile. 2013.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

Our Position Statement on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

We believe AI can support and enrich student learning. Rather than replacing the expertise of our educators, our goal is to foster AI literacy and skills among our staff and students, encouraging them to critically examine and apply AI responsibly while maintaining our high standards of academic integrity.

1. Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to provide guidelines for the ethical, responsible, and effective use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies at Overseas Family School. This policy aims to enhance learning while upholding the values of academic integrity, privacy, and fairness in our educational community.

For the purposes of this policy AI is defined as any computer or machine systems/platforms/applications (on or offline) capable of performing complex tasks that historically only a human could do, such as reasoning, creating, researching information, making decisions, and solving problems.

2. Scope

The following stakeholders are involved in the implementation of this policy: school leadership, teachers, administrative staff, students, and parents/guardians. The scope ensures a collective commitment to ethical, secure, and responsible AI use within our educational environment.

This policy applies to all members of our community at Overseas Family School. It covers the use of AI technologies for educational purposes, including AI platforms we subscribe to.

3. Policy Statement

At Overseas Family School we are committed to leveraging AI to enhance teaching and learning while upholding academic integrity, responsible and ethical use. By fostering accountability and critical thinking, we aim to prepare our students for a future where AI plays a central role. We also take responsibility to follow and respond to AI regulations set out by external stakeholders such as relevant accreditation and authorisation bodies including but not limited to government agencies, International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO), Cambridge International Education (CIE) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).

4. Teaching and Learning/ Acceptable Use

Guiding AI tools are used in ways that enhance and support teaching, school administration and student learning.

Teacher guidelines:

4.1Professional Development: Overseas Family School will offer professional development opportunities for teachers to gain training in AI technologies, empowering them to effectively incorporate AI tools into their instructional practices.

4.2Lesson Planning and Resource Creation: In order to improve lesson planning and create personalised learning experiences for students, teachers may utilise AI-powered educational tools, such as adaptive learning platforms.

4.3Learning Design: Student work, including assessments, must clearly define the appropriate use of generative AI, specifying when and how it can or cannot be utilised. This ensures a fair and accurate evaluation of each student's abilities.

4.4Teacher Expertise: Generative AI tools are used in ways that support teacher expertise, and teachers are recognised and respected as subject matter experts within the classroom.

4.5Administrative Support: AI can be leveraged to simplify administrative tasks such as formative feedback. However, human expertise and judgment must always be applied in the final evaluation of student work.

4.6Teachers are expected to adhere to digital security guidance and procedures regarding the protection of personal information and data of the school and its students. (Please refer to Section 6 for further details).

Student guidelines:

4.7Overseas Family School will offer opportunities for students to gain training in AI technologies. This will include, but is not limited to: access, privacy protection and safety, and bias.

4.8Follow Instructions on AI Use in Assignments: Teachers will outline when and how AI can be used in assignments. Students are to ensure they understand and follow these guidelines to ensure a fair and accurate assessment of their abilities.

4.9Respect Teacher Expertise: While AI can provide useful insights, teachers are the subject matter experts.

4.10Ask for Help When Needed: When unsure about the appropriate use of AI in classwork, homework and assignments, students should always seek clarification from their teachers and/or teacher librarian. They can provide the guidance needed to use these tools effectively.

4.11Students are expected to adhere to digital security guidance and procedures regarding the protection of personal information and data of the school and themselves (See Section 6 for further details).

5. Engaging Parents with AI

5.1Clear and open communication channels will be established to address any questions or concerns about AI usage, ensuring transparency and support throughout the process. Additionally, our policy will be reviewed regularly to ensure it remains up-to-date and effective.

5.2Workshop and/or information sharing will be provided to the parent community when requested or deemed necessary.

6. Security and Data Protection

6.1Privacy and data protection: generative AI tools are used in ways that respect and uphold privacy and data rights.

6.2Protection of student inputs: students, teachers and staff will take appropriate care when entering information into generative AI tools which may compromise any individual’s data privacy. No personal information or identification details of students, staff or parents/guardians will be placed into any AI tool without the necessary permission from senior administration.

6.3Copyright compliance: when using generative AI tools, the school is aware of, and takes measures to comply with, applicable copyright rights and obligations.

7. Academic Integrity

7.1Academic Integrity: When using AI, students must ensure that their work must be original and authentic. Students must appropriately cite any AI-generated content to avoid plagiarism. Students must ensure they are using AI tools responsibly and ethically, without compromising academic honesty (as per the Overseas Families School Academic Integrity Policy).

7.2Academic Integrity expectations and procedures will differ between schools to reflect the appropriate academic development and level of the students. Each school will integrate adequate teaching opportunity across the curriculums to train and develop the necessary skills of each student to meet the academic integrity standards as outlined within each school’s student/parent handbooks.

7.3Plagiarism Detection:

High School: In the High School, all work submitted must be uploaded via the school Learning Portal, which has Turnitin embedded. This ensures that AI-powered plagiarism detection tools can identify potential academic misconduct. For plagiarism detection purposes, teachers will check that the writing style matches the student's abilities or note if there is a vast difference in the quality of work presented. Students may also be asked to verbally explain the content and meaning of their work to check their understanding. Teachers will carefully review flagged content, taking into consideration the context, the student’s previous work, and inform the relevant Grade Level Coordinator regarding their concerns. The Grade Level Coordinator will conduct a viva voce and look at the version history to support the authentication of student work.

IGCSE and IB DP Teachers are expected to be able to access student work to see progression, as well as keep a record of the entire follow-up process regarding AI usage, including the AI percentage in drafts and final submissions, steps taken in cases of unethical AI usage, and final AI percentage. This record is expected to be shared with the Subject Area Leader, respective Grade Level Coordinator, and Curriculum Coordinator, and made available on the server. It may potentially be requested by the IB or Cambridge International Education in May or June, leading up to the release of IB or IGCSE exam results.

Middle School: In Middle School, a high proportion of the students' work is teacher led and directed, completed in class under the teacher's supervision and guidance. For some projects, students may use various AI platforms introduced by the teachers, for various purposes. For plagiarism detection purposes, teachers will check that the writing style matches the student's abilities or note if there is a vast difference in the quality of work presented. Students may also be asked to verbally explain the content and meaning of their work to check their understanding. AI checking tools may also be used to identify if parts of the project have been copied directly from the internet.

Elementary School: In Elementary School, a major proportion of the students' work is teacher led and directed, completed in class under the teacher's supervision and guidance. For some projects, students may use various AI platforms introduced by the teachers, for various purposes. For plagiarism detection purposes, teachers will check that the writing style matches the student's abilities or note if there is a vast difference in the quality of work presented. AI checking tools may also be used to identify if parts of the project have been copied directly from the internet. This detection will solely lie within the teacher's responsibility to check and ensure that the student's work is original and honest.

8. Continuous Improvement

We recognise that this is a rapidly evolving area. This AI policy is dynamic and will be regularly updated to reflect the most current developments, while making sure our practices remain updated, while ensuring responsible use of AI in education.

Last reviewed: March 2025