IB school question

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Mr.Cake
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:40 pm

Post by Mr.Cake »

Unfortunately, my school is very much into the supernatural so we have a whole host of classes indoctrinating them in the ways of Jesus, Muhammad and the historical Buddha. 'Care' is another subject our school teaches twice a week, which is a personal/emotional development class.

To be fair religion must be taught by law in this country. You will find that most IB schools, along with the programme subjects have to follow local incountry requirements.
shadowjack
Posts: 2140
Joined: Sat Oct 06, 2012 9:49 am

Post by shadowjack »

OldmanChan,

some schools offer an alternate curriculum at the HS level, but most IB schools are either full IB (PYP, MYP, IBDP) or else IBDP. My former school offers IBDP but nothing else. If students in Math SL or HL can't cut it, they do math studies. I would imagine a very large school might offer alternatives, but a smaller school doesn't.

In terms of electives, a school only offering IBDP will offer a variety of electives, because some students will opt to only do certificates instead of the full IB diploma. So yearbook, or media, or sports, or something other than the IB topics will also be offered by some schools.

Hope this clarifies things a bit!
D. Vader
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2009 10:34 pm

Post by D. Vader »

Hi Oldman,

I was responding to your question when my Internet connection went down. When I was able to get back on I saw that Shadowjack beat me to the punch! :)

I think Shadowjack is spot on in terms of size of school. More populated schools require more teachers and usually can offer more variety in their curricula. Sometimes schools will have an "IB school within a school" where some students are in the DP while others take the school diploma track, although I am not sure how common this is in the IS world.

Your best best is to go on the individual school websites to check if their curriculum is posted. If so, you'll be able to see if they offer other courses in addition to the DP. Hope this helps!
PsyGuy
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

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Post by PsyGuy »

Many schools have dual curriculums, though they may have only one when in comes to their credential program. There are schools that are pure IB, nd are IB world schools, they do IB and only IB in grades 1-12. All of their students go for the Diploma, because they dont have anything else.
In the school that have dual curriculums (which is pretty common), the school will have a local or another western curriculum until 11th grade where they then have IB DIP as an option. So you would have a school that provides an American or British curriculum, and then has an option for IB DIP in upper secondary.
The primary reason for this is that IB (at DIP) is really an honors program. Most schools have "selective" admission to their DIP program, meaning they dont admit everyone (which would be an "open" admission program). A schools reputation in the IB community is based largely on its IB scores. Schools dont want low IB scores or success rates so they arent going to admit students that cant cut it or will lower their reputation. In such cases the school has a local curriculum or another western curriculum track that will award them a school diploma.

IB certificates by themselves arent very common in ISs. Students either go for the IBDP or they go the local route.

Even IB schools have non IB elective options especially in MYP, since MYP can be anything you really want it to be.
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