Similarities and differences of PYP and CfE –

IB’s Primary years programme (PYP) focuses on the development of the whole child. It aims to help prepare students to become active and caring life long learners taking part in the world around them showing respect towards themselves and others. IB’s PYP is taught from ages 3 to 12, this is similar to CfE’s curriculm which covers ages 3 to 18 however the curriculm is split in two and so the board general education curriculm covering ages 3 to 14/ 15 meaning the areas covered and focuses for their learners in the IB’s PYP are similar to CfE’s Board General Education.

For example IB learn these aims through the six PYP subject areas; language, maths, science, social studies, arts and Personal, social and physical education. These subject areas are similar to the ones taught part of CfE, having expressive arts, health and wellbeing, languages, maths, sciences, social studies as well a religious and moral education and technologies. However the difference with IB’s PYP is that pupils learn more than one language from the age of seven. This shows IB’s focus on languages from a younger age helping broaden horizons and making their aim for pupils to participate in the world easier. CfE’s 1 + 2 language approach has been a newer addition to the curriculm with hopes of achieving a similar outcome with confidence in communication making world connections easier.

IB’s PYP curriculm is also encouraged on being very chid-centred having questions be the lead in their learning. They state they use this method to allow it to be the students job to find meaning in the lesson and learning themselves. This is similar to CfE’s principles Personalisation and choice which also allows and encourages the students to have more of an imput in their learning helping keep engagement and interest in the lesson, allowing pupils to walk away having taken more from the lesson.

CfE’s principle relevance is also key in IB’s PYP curriculum as it too has a focus on relating each subject to another. In both CfE and IB this can be seen by having a lesson outdoors learning about biology of the plants and species  as well as the geography of the land and social issue of pollution around the world or even as simply as using maths skills to count how many red flowers there are compared to yellow. This is an affective criteria to include in lessons and is something both IB’s PYP and CfE agree on the importance of it being in their curriculum.

Finally CfE’s Principles include coherence, this principle could also apply to having a cohering group where member are able to communicate and understand while working together. The importance of family involvement in both the IB’s PYP curriculum and CfE curriculum shows this encouragement of coherence in both the curriculums. Having family involvement not only allows the parents to have a better understand of their child’s learning but allows them to help contribute towards it having the knowledge of how to help out with school hours.

Overall CfE is very similar to IB’s Primary years Programme, both curriculum encourage the same values and morals in their courses as well as the same affective teaching styles which in turn has helped both courses to be successful in their pupils learning.