Growing popularity of the IB diploma

In 1997 when the Mahindra United World College of India became the first exclusively plus two school to offer the IB diploma study programme, it created a minor sensation in haute bourgeois India. Since then 27 schools countrywide have signed up affiliation agreements with the International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva, showing the growing popularity of the IB diploma. Kalpana Parikh reports  For a steadily growing number of peer group students from high-income households around the world, it is the new scholastic status symbol. And given the power of the international demonstration effect in the newly emergent global marketplace, the higher secondary (classes XI-XII) school curriculum designed and marketed by the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) — despite its stiff price tag ($ 4,000 or Rs. 1.8 lakh per child per year) — is finding an increasing number of takers in India.  In 1997 when the Pune-based Mahindra United World College of India — a pricey (Rs.3-5 lakh per year) higher secondary school and a constituent of the globe-girdling United World College group of ten higher secondaries founded by alternative education pioneer Kurt Hahn — became the first exclusively Plus Two school to offer the IB diploma in India to its first batch of 100 Plus Two students from 58 countries around the world (including 32 Indian students), it created a minor sensation in the drawing rooms of haute bourgeois India, receiving widespread press coverage, including a cover story in this publication (EW October 2000). Founded in 1968 by a group of European teachers specifically to address the educational needs of children of business and foreign service professionals in internationally transferable jobs, IBO is a not-for-profit organisation despite the high price tag of its diploma. Currently 1,598 schools in 121 countries with an aggregate enrollment of 200,000 plus children are affiliated with the IBO Council in Geneva. Although the council which employs education researchers around the world to design its syllabuses and curriculums offers PYP and MYP (primary years and middle years programme) curriculums, it’s most well-known study programme is the IB diploma designed for higher secondary students in the final two years of school before university. Only the latter has a set syllabus with PYP and MYP designed as frameworks to shape school pedagogies. “Of all the descriptions applied to the IB the one I like best is ‘the programme that has the courage to leave the gaps’. Students cannot be expected to cover everything and providing the opportunity both for reflection and for digging really deeply into certain parts of their course is surely the sign of a good curriculum. These are both vital aspects of any critical examination as well as being an excellent preparation for university study,” says George Walker, the Geneva-based director general of IBO. Visiting professor of education at the University of Bath and former director of the International School of Geneva, Walker signed up with IBO in 1999. According to Bombay-based Farzana Dohadwalla, the IBO Council’s South Asia regional representative since 1995, the differentiating characteristic of the IBO curriculum is that…