Creating Better World Through Education

IB World Schools have a reputation for quality education, high standards for academic rigour and pedagogical leadership in education environments.  The IB Mission statement reads:

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

This mission statement translates into a set of learning outcomes, called the learner profile, which is often seen as the heart and soul of developing internationally minded global citizens, and includes fostering in students the attributes of being a thinker, inquirer, risk-taker, communicator, who is also open-minded, knowledgeable, reflective, principled, caring, and balanced.

The Primary Years Programme (PYP) offers an inquiry approach and gives children an opportunity to construct their own meaning around six trandisciplinary themes, each with a conceptual ‘big idea’.  Transdisciplinary skills are fostered around communication, research, self-management, thinking and social skills.  Students participate in an exhibition project in their last year of the PYP, which is a synthesis of their understanding of all of the elements of the PYP.  Students are asked to select a real-world issue to explore and then demonstrate what they know and understand about the topic. 

The curriculum of the Middle Years Programme facilitates interdisciplinary studies but includes all of the major disciplines.  In the last year of this programme, students are required to complete a personal project around a topic of particular interest.   Students can demonstrate their knowledge in any number of ways.  Five ‘areas of interaction’ help students to make connections in their learning and to link what they know and understand to the real world to global issues.  

The Diploma Programme is a two-year pre-university course which promotes a broad and balanced curriculum.  Schools can provide either a full DP programme, or offer individual DP courses for students to choose from.  Certificates are available for these single area courses.  The Diploma programme is well recognized by universities around the world; many in fact actively seek out full IB Diploma students and some offer perks such as early acceptance, scholarships, and credit for first year courses.

All three IB programmes foster, and expect, some form of community action or service.  The expectation in the PYP is that students have the right and should have the opportunity to take action, and that action should be student initiated.  The action cycle highlights three key words:  CHOOSE, ACT, and REFLECT.  One of the areas of interaction in the MYP is ‘community and service’, and this requires students to take an active part in their community as a building block to developing responsible citizenship on a larger scale.  ‘CAS’, or Creativity, Action and Service, requires senior students to participate in and complete a number of hours/projects which benefit others in the local, national or international community.

All three International Baccalaureate programmes purposefully help students develop not only the skill to ready them for success in the 21st century, but also the attitudes.  The IB standards and principles are built around best teaching and learning practices which translates into the delivery of a robust international educational programme for our students.

For more information on these programmes, visit www.ibo.org

FAST FACTS:
IB programmes are offered in 2,141 schools in 125 countries to approximately 573,000 students worldwide
PYP – offered to students aged 3-12 in 394 IB World Schools worldwide; programme began in 1997
MYP – offered to students aged 11-16 in 585 IB World Schools worldwide; programme began in 1994
DP – offered to students aged 16-19 in 1,604 IB World Schools worldwide; programme began in 1968

Ms. Peggy Bumanis,
Acting PYP Coordinator,
Mulgrave School,
2330 Cypress Lane,
West Vancouver, B.C.
604 922 3223