IB Having Issues
A former IB student looks into the problems surrounding the internationally recognized substitute for traditional education.
Full disclosure: I am an IB student who just finished the IBDP exams in May 2023, maybe you know that already but just a heads up to anyone that doesn’t know that yet. But what I do know that you probably don't know is that I have been taught under both traditional schools in Hong Kong and China, as well as international schools and schools with an IB-oriented curriculum. I have enjoyed a lot during my years in IB schools, but at the same time, there are also a variety of issues that I think need to be addressed if we want to make the IB a better system.
For readers who are unfamiliar with the IB, the IB (or International Baccalaureate) is a non-profit program that is based in Switzerland (god knows why) and it provides services and products to students across the globe. The programs are divided into four types: Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (IBDP), and Career-related Programme (IBCP). All students between the ages of 3 to 16 go through the PYP course (ranges between 3-12) and the MYP course (ranges between 11-16) together, then for students of the ages between 15 to 19, they can choose whether to attend the IBDP or the IBCP.
Unlike traditional education, the IB has a wide reach in its curriculum and often touches on issues that have a global significance. For universities, the IB program has a special appeal with its program able to develop students with a global mindset. Its tasks are most similar to those offered in the universities themselves. For some students, myself included, an enormous appeal of the IB is that it does not purely focus on exams, the courses put more emphasis on writing essays, making presentations, and using personal knowledge to expand upon what students have already learned. It makes a great alternative to traditional education which is mainly focused on grades and exams, but it does not come without flaws.
Affordability comes first and foremost when discussing the problems with the IB. Not every school provides the IB course, without going into too much detail, there are a lot of complicated steps that need to be done to make sure a school is certified by the IB. Therefore, many institutions that do provide the program are international schools. For example, in Hong Kong, getting into an IB international school includes a monthly tuition starting with a five-digit number in Hong Kong Dollars, and some international schools come with a six-figure monthly tuition fee in Hong Kong Dollars! That’s not all, courses often require textbooks like most forms of education, but unlike textbooks from traditional schools that cost roughly 100 to 200 Hong Kong Dollars, the costs for IB textbooks range from 300 to 900 Hong Kong Dollars on average. Before you hesitate to pull out your wallet for your IB child, you should know that the companies that publish IB textbooks hold a collective monopoly and unless you buy second-hand textbooks, there is no chance your wallet isn’t bleeding when purchasing them.
IB can be a demanding course, with the flood of assignments, essays, and exams, don’t buy into rumors by some that IB is much better than traditional education just because there are no tests in the curriculum. It takes a very delicate and tenuous work-life balance between finishing your work, achieving good grades, and getting appropriate amounts of rest. Many students have complained about the heavy workload, especially in the IBDP course, which causes many sleepless nights as students have to cram through researching, writing, editing, and examining their own essays or coursework. And even myself, with many friends praising my ability to balance my schoolwork and my daily life, the effort I have to take to make sure that is possible is really disorienting, and my tendency to rush things through does not guarantee a consistent generation of high-quality work.
Balancing accuracy and flexibility is a key problem many students face in the IB course. For example, in science subjects, the mark scheme gives specific keywords and phrases that are used to grade student responses. That means even when students provide the right direction towards a correct answer, the lack of keywords can deem the answer by students incorrect and the teacher is able to give 0 marks for that particular question. At the same time, the course needs flexibility when answering answers in the exams, ranging from thinking up case studies in the human sciences courses like Global Politics to analyzing new information that students have not learned before like Paper 1 for ESS (Environmental Systems and Societies). Finding the fine line between the two is both key to achieving good grades in the course, but it also renders the chances of achieving it extremely unlikely for some.
Objectivity can be a real problem when it comes to grading. Some courses, like Theory of Knowledge (TOK), completely or heavily rely on essays as part of examining the performance of a student. The assessment criteria provide generally vague comments on what level teachers should grade students’ work including phrases like “basic,” “pertinent,” or “acceptable.” These phrases are designed in a manner that for the same essay, a teacher can grade it with a 7 out of 10, another teacher can grade it with a 9 out of 10, or another teacher can grade it with a 4 out of 10. In areas where subjectivity cannot be eliminated, it makes the course more unfair when it is substituted with biases and personal interpretations instead of actual justifications.
Creativity is hard to demonstrate in IB courses, especially in essays. In the IB, the curriculum encourages students to demonstrate their ability by using their own way of structuring essays and providing arguments and counterarguments to their talking points. So far so good. But, many teachers argue that students should follow specific formats as it guarantees high grades while fitting into the IB’s extremely harsh standards for their criteria. What students and the IB should make of that dilemma? Should students go rogue with their structuring to show off their ability? Or stick to the well-graded formats while killing the creative expression of students?
All of this contributes to the uncertainty within the IB education system for students. Especially after the predicted grades come out, giving universities an idea of what you will get for your final exams. Setting aside predicted grades being loosely given out by teachers, which are rendered exactly the same as the grades given to report cards and hence eliminating the chance of personal growth from the student, the uncertainty for scores to fall is persistent in the minds of many students. IB teachers argue that predicted grades are given fairly based on individual ability and there is a safety net for many students through the minimum grade requirement given by universities. But the fear and constant calculations by students on falling grades due to poor performance in the final exams and in different subjects is pervasive, generating anxiety and stress for students before the big exams.
Even with all these problems, the IB can still be and indeed is an enjoyable course for at least some. The important part lies in the student’s ability to adapt and accept the course based on personal preferences and individual ability. If students can balance well, the IB is not as nightmarish as some might claim.
And for the IB, the organization needs to look into the faults inside the system and fix them accordingly. Personally, giving the group advice is the best I can do. And hey, if this makes you IB heads feel better, I’m going to write another article criticizing traditional education. Stay tuned!