The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) has four main capacities, which are as follows:

• Successful Learners – encouraging students to reach their highest possible standards of personal achievement by being open to new ways of thinking/learning, and to be motivated and enthusiastic about their own learning. Successful Learners are able to use communication, literacy, numeracy and technology skills to aid them in thinking creatively and in making reasoned evaluations both independently and as part of a group.
• Confident Individuals – encouraging students to have a secure sense of self-respect and a secure set of values and beliefs that they can use to develop their own views of the world and help navigate their own lives within it. Confident Individuals are encouraged to independently take calculated risks and make informed decisions in order for them to have the best emotional, physical and mental wellbeing possible.
• Responsible Citizens – have respect for others and are encouraged to participate responsibly in social, economic, and political issues. Responsible Citizens are able to recognise and understand different beliefs and cultures, and use this information to help them to better understand about the world they live in. Responsible Citizens are also able to understand complex issues and be able to make informed and rational decisions when faced with ethical issues.
• Effective Contributors – students are encouraged to have an enterprising mindset, and to approach this with self-sufficiency and resiliency. Effective Contributors can take initiative in a variety of different settings, and are able to communicate and are encouraged to take on a leadership role from time-to-time. They are able to create and develop, and to apply critical thinking in new situations, both independently and when practising teamwork.

Throughout their entire learning career, IB students are encouraged to work on and develop ten particular attributes, known as the IB ‘Learner Profile’, which represents the IB mission statements. The Learner Profile attributes are as follows:

• Inquirers – encouraging students to be curious, to do adequate research, and to have enthusiasm for their own learning, both independently and within a team.
• Knowledgeable – developing their conceptual understanding, and drawing in inspiration from both local and global contexts to help further their own knowledge.
• Thinkers – encouraging students to use critical thinking when approached with complex and/or ethical problems in order to find a tactful way to deal with said problems.
• Communicators – encouraging students to communicate confidently with their peers and with others around the world, and to be able to listen to and take on board the opinions of other individuals and groups. The IB aims to guide students into communicating effectively in more than one language to encourage barrier-free global communication.
• Principled – encouraging students to have dignity and respect for justice, being able to act appropriately in accordance with their individual beliefs, and being able to understand the consequences their actions will have on themselves and on their peers.
• Open-minded – students are open to new ideas and experiences, and are not fixated on doing things any one way. They are able to learn and grow from past experiences and are able to use past failures to help them improve and flourish in the future.
• Caring – showing sympathy, empathy, and respect to the world around us and those in it, and being able to incorporate the worldviews of others into our own lives ibn order to make the world an easier place to live in for everyone.
• Risk-takers – encouraging students to be able to evaluate new situations appropriately and take calculated risks to be able to get the most out of their learning experiences. Students are resilient and flexible in the face of change. Students are also encouraged to take calculated risks that are slightly out of their comfort zone in order to be enriched in new experiences that can further their learning.
• Balanced – encouraging students to recognise the importance of balancing their emotional, physical and mental wellbeing within their learning. Students also recognise that they will be balancing working independently and interdependently with their peers and with the rest of the world
• Reflective – Students can look back upon their past learning experiences and use these, along with the understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, to better their own learning in future endeavours.

Although the IB and CfE curricula differ somewhat, there is a lot of crossover within the four capacities of CfE and the ten attributes of the IB Learner Profile. For example, the IB idea of encouraging students to become Inquirers and Knowledgeable is similar to the CfE capacity of being a Successful Learner, as all of these things include being able to think critically and openly both individually and within teams to better their own learning. Similarly, the IB idea of being a Communicator relates to being an Effective Contributor, as both encourage students to vocalise their ideas and thoughts and communicate these to their peers, while also taking on board what their peers have to say. The IB ideas of being Principled and Caring links to the CfE capacity of Responsible Citizens, as all three of these are centred around working closely with the rest of the world, and being able to understand and express different cultures and beliefs, while also readily and respectfully tackling social, economic and political issues. Furthermore, within CfE, we have the idea of ‘growth’ and ‘fixed’ midsets, and encouraging students to always have a growth mindset. This similar idea is also conveyed within the IB attribute of being Open-minded, as both ideas teach children to be open to new experiences and strategies of learning. Overall, although there are some differences between the two curricula, it is clear that both CfE and IB have similar missions in encouraging every individual student to utilise their own skillsets and attributes in order to be the best learner that they can be.