Reasons the IB Diploma is the Best Preparation for University & Beyond

It’s really important to think about where the IB came from. The IB isn’t a National Curriculum, it’s an International one.

In 1948, Marie-Thérèse Maurette, the headteacher of the International School of Geneva, wrote a paper called “Educational Techniques for Peace. Do they exist?”. From that paper, a group of like-minded teachers in Geneva began to build a curriculum, which they felt might serve the purposes of the post Second World War world, and it was a curriculum that was specifically designed to promote peace, understanding and harmony.

In the 1960s, the IB was launched by a group of people who were surrounded by the revolutions in Prague, the revolutions in Paris and the Vietnam War. This curriculum was designed to show students that they could make a difference; that they could make the world a better place. And what better preparation for University could we give to our students, than to show them that they can be part of solutions to the problems that we today face on our planet.

The IB program has many parts to it, but the most important part, the part that it begins with is the core. The core consists of three elements; the first of those elements is what we call CAS (Creativity, Activity and Service). This is where students get the opportunity to begin to understand their role within the wider community.

As part of their CAS program, students have to complete substantial activities around creativity, activity or service. They might get involved in poetry competitions and writing competitions – they might help younger students in school to learn how to read. They might further afield get involved in work experience projects, or perhaps internationally, they might go abroad as our students do, to places like Tanzania and help in lesser economically developed countries to build communities.

The students have to record what they’ve done for their CAS project and this is a really important part of the International Baccalaureate program, because it’s all about educating the whole student. It’s about so much more than just how they do in their academic studies.

The second part of the core is the Extended Essay, which is absolutely crucial. Students will be required to write 4,000 words on a subject of their choice, usually chosen from their favorite subjects or higher-level subjects which they would study in university. One thing we do know from students who have gone on after the IB and then come back from University tours is that this 4,000-word essay is a real challenge for these 16 and 17-year-olds. However, they get a lot of support and when they go to university and their teachers ask them to write an essay, they’ve already done it. So they have a massive head start and it’s a major reason why the students who have completed the IB program tend to have smaller dropout rates when they get to university.

The final part of the core, is a subject which we call the Theory of Knowledge, or to IB students, TOK. This is a subject which is a sort of combined philosophy and epistemology subject, where we look at how humans have built knowledge over many years, how we’ve shared that knowledge and how knowledge is built within certain curriculum areas. This course gets students thinking in really strange and different ways to those which they’re used to in their study lower down the school. It gets their brains to be more elastic and they have to think about things from a different perspective. It’s absolutely an important part of the core because it’s about getting these students to become real thinkers.

These three elements of the core are crucial to the IB; it’s where the International Baccalaureate program begins. However, the students have to study academic subjects too, and for the IB they will continue to study six subjects, chosen from each block, in Year 12 and 13. They continue with Math and Literature, a foreign language, as well as Humanities. This gives them a broad and balanced curriculum, which is a fantastic preparation for the studies they’ll take on at university.

They also get the opportunity to specialize too. While students have to study six subjects, three are at the standard level, while three are at a higher level. It’s these higher-level subjects where students generally choose to continue to study at university.

It’s an all-round course that gives them breadth and depth at the same time, while the core revolves around educating the individual. Therein lies the reasons to choose the IB curriculum before you go to university, as it prepares you to the fullest of your abilities.