Is the IB still ‘sufficiently UWC’?
Is the IB still ‘sufficiently UWC’?
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Mr Hui and Miss Ng had already been briefed extensively on the IB Diploma by the former Chairman of our Board, Dr Y T Li. The aim of Thursday’s discussion was to explore the practical implementation of the IB and the challenges (both practical and philosophical) that it posed to schools. Between us, John and I have about 40 years experience in managing the IB Diploma in schools, and we have also both served as senior IB examiners, classroom teachers and parents of IB students. I hope we were in a good position to offer worthwhile advice to Mr Hui and Miss Ng.
The origins of the IB and the United World Colleges are inextricably linked. When the first UWC (Atlantic College in Wales) was established some 46 years ago, the need was quickly identified for a matriculation credential that would be accepted by universities everywhere in the world to serve the needs of a genuinely multinational student community. Co-operation between the early UWCs such as Atlantic College with some other international schools (notably the International School of Geneva and the United Nations International School in New York) led to the genesis of the IB Diploma in 1968.
The beginnings of the IB were very small in scale, and focussed mainly on the needs of the (then quite small) internationally mobile community of international students. Many of the early efforts of people involved in the IB involved gaining recognition by universities of the credential, something that took many years of painstaking work that is still continuing in a few parts of the world today. Even when I first became with the IB (in 1990, when I introduced it into the school where I was Principal at the time), the Regional Director of the Asia-Pacific Region was just a part-time position, the incumbent also being a classroom teacher of Geography at the United World College of South-East Asia in Singapore.
However, the high quality and distinctive features of the IB Diploma program quickly led to its wider adoption in national schools as a curriculum improvement strategy, along with expansion into a full set of three programs spanning the ages of 5 to 19, so that today the three IB programs are studied by more than half a million students in 125 countries. Although all the UWCs except Simón Bolívar UWC in Venezuela (which is an agricultural college) teach the IB Diploma, the UWCs are proportionally a much smaller component of the IB than they were back in the 1970s and 1980s.
An article in the latest (May 2008) issue of ‘United World’ examines the role played by Atlantic College in the establishment of the IB. The article emphasises how the original shape of the IB was formed by UWC priorities, which is why Theory of Knowledge is at the heart of the IB, why the Extended Essay is such a key component, why CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) is a compulsory though non-graded requirement, and why so many of today’s school-generated IB syllabuses originated in UWCs (and continue to be generated in UWCs). I think it is pleasing that UWC initiatives can continue to have a wider educational influence through the IB in this way. Indeed, at the last UWC Education Committee meeting, it was agreed that UWC teachers (including Principals) would be encouraged to contribute their time and effort as generously as possible in the wider IB world.
Increasingly, however, some question whether the recent spectacular growth of the IB, especially in national schools in economically developed countries such as the US, Australia and the UK, has forced the diverted the IB away from some aspects of its original focus. Some suggest that in its drive for profits (even though the IB is a non-profit foundation based in Geneva), it is placing commercial priorities ahead of educational interests, and critics point to changes such as the reduced provisions for self-taught (school-supported) language teaching as evidence of this. Others claim that the arts are under-represented in the IB curriculum structure, while further critics accuse the IB of euro-centricity (and especially anglo-centricity) because so much of the curriculum and examinations work is based in the UK (specifically near Cardiff in Wales), and for reasons of finance or ease of access, there is an over-representation of British and other European teachers on the curriculum committees.
If the IB is losing its cutting-edge global focus, then that should be a concern for anyone in a United World College.
In the past year or two, partly as a reaction to the changes some see in the IB, and partly as a proactive initiative, the United World Colleges have been looking to recognise all the extra things that are required of students in UWCs but which are not general IB requirements, such as greater commitment to community service and residential life. This has led to calls for the UWCs as a Movement to develop its own UWC Diploma to supplement the IB, and potentially perhaps even to replace the IB in some UWCs. All the UWCs are currently working on the philosophical foundation of this proposed UWC Diploma, which will hopefully be flexible enough to accommodate the IB Diploma as well as several other exciting alternative programs.
A UWC Diploma has the potential to offer some exciting possibilities to keep UWCs at the forefront of cutting edge educational best practice. Of course, its development will have to be managed extremely carefully to ensure that the legitimate needs of students to gain worthwhile places in excellent universities is not diluted, as this is a key requirement of most of the National Committees that select our students. Nonetheless, if the proposed UWC Diploma is structured creatively and flexibly so that the IB Diploma can be accommodated comfortably within its framework, while at the same time providing the potential to develop innovative new structures that will meet the needs of a wider spectrum of students, then a stimulating and refreshing win-win solution seems certain to emerge.
The real winners would then be the UWC students, which is precisely where the benefits should lie.
The front gate of Li Po Chun United World College celebrates its identity as an “IB World School”