IB Diploma Program:
International Baccalaureate is a globally recognized diploma program offered by IB schools to students of around 16 to 19 years for a period of over 2 years. It has become excessively popular in the current times due to its broad spectrum of study, extensive assessments, commitment to the curriculum, and other factors. Only IB-accredited schools can offer this IB Diploma program to the students. The students enrolled in IB schools for the IB Diploma program receive a Diploma certificate after their course of study, which can be important for higher educational challenges and future college and university prospects.
IB Diploma Program Features:
The IB Diploma Program has 3 main components that are core to the foundation of IB teaching and learning. They are:
1. Inquiry-based learning:
This element of the IB Diploma Program focuses on raking the curiosity of a student, fueling the urge to ask and learn more. Inquiry of thought and expression, inquisitiveness for diving deep and expanding their knowledge, is the objective here. It helps keep the students curious forever, which is the foundation of learning, and without it, learning becomes almost impossible. That way, students are always eager to ask, inquire, and learn more, broadening their sphere of knowledge.
2. CAS leverage:
CAS stands for Creativity, Activity, and Service. The name says it all. The students are made to teach the foundations of Creativity, experiment & experiential learning through activities and sensitivity to service. This is the most striking feature of IBDP since this shapes the overall personality of the student in terms of a unique approach, learning with experience, and acts of service.
3. Internal Assessment (IA) and Extended Essay (EE):
This is one of the most revered components of IBDP. Extended Essay is a special feature of the program in which the students are expected to write an independently researched essay and a 4000 words independent research paper. These are skills required at higher levels of education, which are taught in the early years of higher education in the IB Diploma Program.
Pros and Cons of the IB Diploma Program:
The IB Diploma Program is globally recognized and accredited in many countries, including India. There are a considerable number of schools catering to IB standards and curriculum. Parents are coming forward to enroll their students in IB schools looking at the rigor and better prospects due to the curriculum. While the IB has stabilized itself with varied and well-roundedness in many aspects, mostly positive, it inevitably has a few drawbacks to its name.
Pros of the IB Diploma Program:
1. Solid Foundation for Advanced Learning:
The subjects are divided into 6 subject groups, including a meticulously crafted syllabus. The academics also involve various activities, practical learning, research papers, essay writing, and numerous community and personal projects laying a rock-solid foundation for higher education opportunities.
2. Higher Acceptance Rates:
The students of IB are known to have higher degrees of comprehension, critical thinking, innovation, and analytical abilities, which gives them an extra edge over other candidates in getting accepted into reputed colleges and universities. Many colleges and universities look for students with impressive foundational learning, which makes it easier for them to deliver their high-end and qualitative teaching to push them to higher levels of growth and development. Hence, IB students have a higher acceptance rate into educational institutions in India and abroad as well.
3. Ingenious potential:
With the incredible qualities an IB student carries, both in competence and character, they are believed to have incredible potential to break through the skies in all fields when rightly guided. This also stands true because the students in IBDP get refined in all spheres of their life through various activities and projects on advanced levels, which constantly stimulate their cerebral strength along with their personal, social, psychological, and professional spheres in life, making them all-round achievers, who can ace at everything they aspire and work for.
4. Holistic Development:
A student’s abilities and greatest potential are hindered if their learning is limited to rote and subjective learning and confined to a classroom. Holistic development is the need of the hour because the world and scenarios and the challenges faced in higher spheres are not just limited to one domain. Rather they are gaining a multi-disciplinary scale and getting more entangled with multiple domains. This requires specialists who are exceptionally skilled at a certain domain while being capable of interlinking any and every other domain across. This makes them progress and grow holistically.
Cons of the IB Diploma Program:
1. Burden of study:
The subjects in the IB curriculum are taught intensively and with more rigor. The concepts are to be covered within the stipulated time and comprehensively. The schedule is full of activities such as classroom teaching, tests, practicals, lab activities, research papers, community and personal projects, field activities, extra-curricular programs and co-scholastic activities, and more. This barely gives room for themselves or their social spheres in life. Along the way, they also develop FOMO – Fear of Missing Out, when they look at their peers having time for themselves and activities other than studies. This puts a burden on the students’ mental and psychological fronts.
2. Limited subject choice:
The IBDP syllabus is divided into 6 subject groups and two levels, SL (Standard Level) and HL (Higher Level), in which all the students study the 6 subject groups, except that the HL students have a more intensive testing system, where they have a greater number of topics and segments for their assessments. Besides, the subject groups for classes 1 to 5 are
- Language and Literature
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Biology
- Language Acquisition
Whereas the subject groups for classes 11 and 12 are
- English
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Geography
- Biology
- History
- Mathematics
- Economics
- Language Acquisition
The above specified are the respective subject choices along with internal assessments. Here, the subject choice is limited for the students.
3. Transitional challenges:
The IB curriculum is exceptionally good when it comes to its academic profile. Still, one of the very distressing issues comes when the students, for some reason, have to undergo transitions into other curricula or even completely change the city or country. Although IB is an internationally recognized program, not every city or country has schools that provide IB programs. The regular standard programs become redundant to the IB students. It isn’t a cakewalk to easily transition into other programs such as ICSE or IGCSE, or others.
4. Longer and more pressing course of study:
Since it is already mentioned that the IBDP curriculum is very intensive and rigorous, the subjects, the study time, and the academic attention are almost sky-piercing. There is too little time for one’s affairs. Students are almost always occupied with one or the other activities, whether academic or extra-curricular, classroom or lab-based, or on-field. The course spans over 2 years of painstaking study time; it is even distressing to the students and their parents to hold out for so long. Having their children bear the brunt of such rigorous study time while struggling to cope with mental, emotional, or psychological issues is every parent’s nightmare.
Top Quality Tutoring
Litera Centre’s tutoring program is precisely fabricated to impart the best quality teaching to students following the IB Guidelines. We efficiently harness suitable teaching methods and tools to boost the confidence and problem-solving skills of the students.
Conclusion:
The IB Diploma Program comes with both Pros and Cons. It, nevertheless, is a better prospect. With the solid foundation the IB Diploma program lays, the rigor and extensive teaching approach it follows, and the commitment it demands and delivers, it shapes the overall personality for holistic development. Acing the IB Diploma Program guarantees acceptance rates into dream colleges. It fosters better learning and career opportunities. It has a few drawbacks, which can be kept in check with cooperation between schools and students. Litera Centre is one of the leading platforms catering to the IB and IGCSE curriculum with impressive world-class tuition, innovative learning, a result-oriented approach, 1:1 mentorship, expert faculty, and all-time support for smooth student-teacher interaction. Click HERE to visit the page and explore our courses.
Book your FREE DEMO class now!
Also Read :
https://www.literacentre.com/blog/10-advantages-of-choosing-ib-curriculum
