International Baccalaureate (IB)

The International Baccalaureate aims to grow knowledgable and caring young people who are willing to help create a better and more peaceful world through cooperative understanding and respect for all people.

The International Baccalaureate aims align with the aims of the Curriculum for Excellence, as students of both education programmes are placed at the centre of their learning.  In addition they both encourage pupils to take control of the world around them and grasps the opportunity for pupils from different cultures to share their prospectives.

I have experienced different aspects of the International Baccalaureate when on placement in April. I taught with an underlying tone of acceptance and respect for all. I was constantly encouraging my pupils to work together and collaborate on most tasks, as this helps pupils establish a well balanced life for themselves.

The core aims of the International Baccalaureate and the Curriculum for Excellence are very similar. The 10 different aims of the IB programme can be condensed into the four capacities of the CfE. One of the 10 aims of the International Baccalaureate is to be communicator, this links directly to the one of the four capacities, effective contributors, as pupils need to be able to communicate in different ways and different settings. The biggest difference between the IB and the CfE is that the International Baccalaureate focus more on a world wide scale. Encouraging pupils to be global citizens something that is not so clearly stated in the Curriculum for Excellence which focus mostly on Scotland.

Most of the progressive education trends of the IB relate to the aims of the CfE but the one that related the most in my opinion was the child centred aspect. All the four capacities of the CfE are directly related to putting the child at the centre of their own learning and school experience.

The main similarity of Primary Years Programme (PYP) and Curriculum for Excellence is that both programmes want to encourage interdisciplinary learning throughout all subject areas within the school. Pupils are taught to expect different subjects to link in together, this is a useful skill for later on in life.

However some of the differences are that CfE focuses more on a community level, with the participation in the woodland classroom and encouraging parents to be involved, while PYP focuses on a global level with pupils learning at least one additional language during their time in school. The program also prepares pupils to in cultures different to their own across the world. Two areas that are taught within the Curricular for Excellence but not within the Primary Years Program are Religious studies and Technology. 

This shows that while the two programs are similar they do have slight differences that set the two curriculums apart from one another, however this only means that we can learn from both.