19 ICS Paris Students Awarded the IB Bilingual Diploma 2026: What It Means to Be a BML Smart School

ICS Paris is proud to announce that 19 students from its Class of 2026 — nearly half of this year's cohort — have been awarded the prestigious IB Bilingual Diploma, recognising sustained academic achievement across two languages of instruction and assessment.

This outcome is not incidental. It is a direct reflection of ICS Paris's identity as a Bilingual and Multilingual Learners (BML) Smart School — a designation that shapes how we design our curriculum, support our students and build our community from the very beginning of their journey with us.

What it means to be a BML Smart School

As a BML Smart School, ICS Paris is committed to recognising, valuing and actively developing the linguistic abilities of every student, regardless of their starting point. Rather than treating multilingualism as a challenge to be managed, we treat it as an asset to be cultivated — through targeted language support, mother-tongue programmes, and a curriculum that encourages students to build proficiency across multiple languages throughout their school journey. This philosophy underpins our approach at every level, from our youngest learners through to our IBDP graduates.

Why multilingualism matters

Research consistently shows that multilingual learners develop stronger cognitive flexibility, enhanced problem-solving skills and greater cultural empathy than their monolingual peers. At ICS Paris, multilingualism is not simply an academic exercise; it is a lived, daily reality. With students representing over 70 nationalities, our community is a genuine microcosm of the interconnected, multicultural world our students will graduate into. Learning alongside peers from such a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds builds not only language proficiency, but also adaptability, open-mindedness and the kind of international outlook that today's globalised world demands.

The impact on university pathways

The IB Bilingual Diploma carries genuine currency with universities around the world. Institutions increasingly recognise that graduates holding a Bilingual Diploma bring more than academic ability — they bring cross-cultural communication skills, cognitive agility and a demonstrated capacity to operate confidently across languages and cultures. As a result, our Bilingual Diploma graduates go on to secure places at a wide and impressive range of universities internationally, entering higher education with a distinctive advantage in an increasingly interconnected, multilingual world.

Congratulations to our 19 Bilingual Diploma recipients

We warmly congratulate the 19 members of the Class of 2026 who have been awarded the IB Bilingual Diploma this year. Their achievement is a powerful affirmation of what is possible when multilingualism is embraced, not merely accommodated — and a proud reflection of what it means to be part of the ICS Paris community.