A poem… in praise of the IB

Written (unprompted) by one of our L6 IB Diploma students…

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There once was a day

When I heard a man say:

“Do IB, it will broaden your mind”.

So I took this advice

Hardly thought of it twice

And left AS’s behind.

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A life full of CAS,

A whirlwind of maths,

And never a moment to spare.

But it’s the best thing I think,

I would never rethink,

I am full of wonders to share.

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So forget those old devils:

The boring A-levels –

Come join us and prepare to be wowed.

Come out of your crowd,

And shout it out loud:

You’re doing IB, and you’re proud!

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More information available at www.bryanston.co.uk/ib

Risk taking: the bread and butter of learning

‘It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education’ Albert Einstein

There is a sense in which our IB pioneers this year have taken a risk.

We reassured them that we had done our preparation (3 years of it), had sounded out a whole raft of universities (who range from being neutral to loving it), had asked for frank assessments of teething problems from other schools who’d recently introduced the IB Diploma (and very willing to help they were too); we made the strong educational, strategic and pragmatic case for choosing the IB Diploma.

But no one likes being a guinea pig (which is partly [but only partly] why I prefer ‘pioneer’), and so choosing the path less trodden was, if it was anything, a risk.

The IB Learner Profile can get a bit of a bad press – the claim being that the characteristics therein might fit well alongside motherhood and apple pie – but I’m not so sure. OK, so ‘knowledgeable’, ‘inquirers’, and ‘thinkers’ aren’t going to raise too many eyebrows as aspirations for 6th form students, but ‘caring’, ‘balanced’, and ‘risk-takers’ might.

And anyway, the point about the Learner Profile is not for it to sit somewhere buried in a corporate mission document as a collection of nebulous and unarguably uncontroversial educational principles. It is meant as a provocative working document which, as it were, pokes us educators in the ribs and says, ‘OK, if you think these attributes are good ones to develop, what are you doing to develop them?’

So what is the role of risk taking in education? It sounds a bit, well… risky, doesn’t it?

Well, actually, every good teacher and every ambitious student does it every day. A lesson without risk will probably be a lesson without learning. As I’ve said in a previous blog – outside comfort zones is where progress is made (and here is another thought-provoking blog about educational risk taking, and the dangers of a culture which eschews it).

It may be possible to learn a list of things which you didn’t know before without taking a risk, but to understand something new requires an acknowledgement that you don’t know it already, and that always requires some personal risk.

I can picture a particular student now who employed any number of diversionary tactics to avoid setting his sights on the level of expectation I had set. Then one glorious day, he had a go… and managed to succeed. That was risky for him – the potential for losing face, the potential for reinforcing his perceptions about his (in)ability – but without taking that risk, his progress would have been stunted.

That is not to say that risk, per se, is always a good thing… a successful outcome requires a careful calculation. But because much of the calculation is based either on known unknowns or unknown unknowns (to quote another calculating risk taker), a student needs to take much of it on trust. That is to say, a student needs to trust that the teacher has carried out a thorough risk assessment.

For the IB to put ‘risk-taker’ in the top 10 attributes which they want to develop with the Diploma is refreshing, reassuring and one of the very good reasons to give it careful consideration as a 6th form course. To encourage calculated risk taking is to encourage real learning.

So like the positive (but calculated) risk taking which is the bread and butter of learning, the risk involved with choosing the IB Diploma is positive as well. The universities are on board, the school is prepared, the support is in place – those aren’t the risks. Embracing a programme which promises to push you out of your comfort zone – now that’s risky.

Linking generations

One of the great features of the IB Diploma programme is CAS – Creativity, Action and Service. It’s part of the Diploma ‘Core‘, which means it is definitive; if you want to get a handle on the educational DNA of the Diploma, CAS gives a strong steer.

And it’s the third aspect of CAS I want to blog about today, because, for me, Service is potentially the most transformative aspect of the whole Diploma. It forces students beyond their comfort zones in ways that others parts of their sixth form experience do not, and that’s the place where real learning happens.

So two of our IB students dropped in to one of the residential care homes in Blandford last week. In many ways it was hum drum and unremarkable – making tea, chatting, sitting with the residents. But in another sense it was utterly remarkable: 16-year-olds spending time with octogenarians, serving them, listening to them, valuing them.

There have been many column inches written about the disconnect between generations: older generations dismissive and fearful of ‘youth’ who are seen as menacing and selfish; younger generations dismissive of older people for being slow, out of touch and even a drain on resources.

The caricature has been well developed over recent years, and it cannot fail to make students wary about this sort of thing: what will I say? I won’t have anything in common. I’ve got so much work to do. But overcoming that anxiety and spending an afternoon in a care home is an opportunity to reconnect two sets of human beings whose paths would very likely never cross, and fill out the dimensions which get obscured by caricature.

So one gentleman dug out a book which had been written about him, describing the time he’d spent representing agricultural labourers in Dorset. He loved showing it to the two Bryanston IB students, and they appreciated more fully that here was a man who’d had a full life, with ambitions and frustrations, whose world happened recently to have shrunk to the four walls of the care home.

But CAS is never about ‘hit and run’ service: these two will go back, get to know the residents, think about what they might do beyond ‘tea and chat’ to enrich their lives – music? An outing? No, it’s not hum drum and unremarkable – this is education which no classroom could deliver.

And it’s not at all clear to me who is getting most out of the arrangement…

Exciting Extended Essay Plans

Bronze religious standard symbolizing the universe, used by Hittite priests, from the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations

What better way to bring into sharp relief the difference for IB students over the next few weeks and months? As peers following Another Programme are busy writing revision schedules and making flashcards, IB students are laying plans for their extended research project which will run from now until November. It’s a feast of the best bits – some surprise was initially expressed: ‘you mean I can choose to research whatever I want?’ – and it traces a satisfying arc from a point where students are starting to spread their intellectual wings to a point where they’re looking forward to and applying for the next challenge at university, informed and inspired, in many cases, by the very research they’re doing.

The Extended Essay is part of the Core Requirements of the IB Diploma, that part which, in many ways, defines its character. It picks up many of the educationally most authentic elements of the IB Learner Profile – inquirer, thinker, communicator, open-minded, risk-taker – and aims to foster a love of life-long learning which is at the heart of the IBO’s Mission Statement. Misnomer it may be (it’s not particularly extended – only 4000 words – and if it’s done in an experimental science, it’s not really an essay), but miss the target it does not.

So over the last few weeks our IB students at Bryanston have been considering their options, and with the polymath tendency already evident by virtue of choosing the IB over A levels, some have been struggling to pin their area of research down: contrast a French and English novel or explore a physical phenomenon in the science labs? Well, half term is a looming deadline (btw, we think deadlines are great – our two-year coursework calendar keeps pressure points to a minimum) and declarations are starting to emerge. Here are some of my favourites:

Why did the Hittities disappear?

What are the parallels between the Great Depression and the current economic slowdown? (quote from this student: ‘I’ve been mulling this topic over ever since I decided to choose the IB in year 11…’)

Biofuels and their environmental impact.

How good are fish at learning?

Aspects of aerodynamics, using the the school’s wind tunnel.

Philosophical analysis of historical things [that may need some work].

They’ll need to tighten these topics up into focused research questions (that’s another deadline), but here are the makings of some cracking research proposals, soon to be honed with the help of their assigned supervisor. And academic honesty (the IB’s rather more progressive approach to plagiarism and all things wikipedia) is given its proper place. Yes, there’s a rather overly pedantic emphasis on correct citation, but the issue is right out there in the open. Not to mention the threat – a significant negative result from feeding the final essay through a plagiarism checker could result in disqualification from the whole Diploma.

Worth all the effort? Well, there are few who have a problem with it educationally, and it’s certainly better than some of the anaemic coursework (what’s left of it) served up at A level, and very much holds its own alongside the Extended Project Qualification. But it also has a history of rave reviews from universities who see it developing just the sorts of skills they’ve found wanting from traditional sixth-form qualifications. You can’t produce a decent Extended Essay whilst being hand-held and spoon-fed. They think the same about being a successful undergraduate.

Recently the University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education did some research comparing U Va students from an IB and an AP background. They found quite striking differences, with IB students significantly more likely to indicate that they:

• felt prepared for college-level coursework involving research.
• had executed a research project at U Va.
• took pride in their research.
• intended to conduct future research.
• found their research skills to be important to future success.

By the time the final deadline arrives in November, our students will be experts in an area which fascinates them, and teed up for their final two terms and university beyond.

A-level reforms ape best of IB Diploma?

Michael Gove defends A-level reform (Guardian Video)

One of the many features of the IB Diploma which sets it apart from other sixth form courses is the nature of its examinations.

They all happen at the end.

Now that all sounds rather risky, surely – cramming for the test at the end, the potential for a bad day, all your eggs in one basket, and all that.

But this feature is one of the many reasons why universities trust Diploma grades – they have proved to be excellent indicators of quality, and the Diploma grade inflation rate has been flat at 0% for as many years as anyone can remember.

The IB Diploma is designed to develop a whole host of academic qualities (not to mention all the non-academic qualities it develops too) which are succinctly summarised in the IB Learner Profile. And the assessments are designed to test across all these areas, not just narrowly for knowledge.

That means a last-minute cramming strategy really won’t help – a slow burn over two years is much more effective, not to mention being educationally more authentic. The best students (in the broadest sense) get the best grades.

‘Terminal’ examining, as it’s called, frees up space in the course for thought development and genuine inquiry, allowing links to be made which a modular course struggles to encourage.

But (and it’s a big but) these terminal assessments are far from the only-chance saloon which the new A-level regime seems to be presenting (‘[the changes] will address the [issue] of … resits leading to grade inflation’, Michael Gove in his letter to Ofqual).

To begin with, coursework is a big part of the IB Diploma. Its benefits are warmly embraced whilst its pitfalls (academic honesty being a major one) are robustly managed. The trend in A levels is away from inquiry-based coursework and there’s no suggestion in the new proposals that this trend will be reversed.

What’s more, Diploma exams can be retaken in up to two further sessions, which means that if the dreaded bad day does materialise (twice), a candidate has the chance to have another go. No such provision is apparent in the new A level plan.

The new A levels may be aping what is seen as the ‘rigorous’, and therefore enviable part of the IB Diploma, but an assessment model isn’t the same as a curriculum ethos.

The IB, free as it is from political interference, will continue to develop students through its enlightened philosophy of depth in some areas, breadth in others, and an assessment regime which allows students to show their range of abilities.

As the Education Secretary puts it in his letter to Ofqual: ‘universities with the most competitive entry criteria look for skills beyond those required by A levels’.

Creative Service

A wonderful part of the IB Diploma is its insistence on placing co-curricular activities right at the heart of a student’s experience – that’s why CAS (Creativity, Action and Service) is one of the ‘Core‘ elements. So even if a student has 7’s across the board (the top grade in the 6 academic subjects), to pass the Diploma, a student has to meaningfully engage in CAS.

One of the aims of CAS is not only to do some creative stuff, some active stuff and some service stuff; students are encouraged to think about linking Service with one or two of the other areas.

At Bryanston, we have loads of opportunities to do that within the school community – helping out with one of the junior sports teams, mucking in with some estate work like rebuilding walls or engaging in some woodland management. But we also want to look beyond the school gates to the wider community.

The school runs a ‘Tuesday Club’ where older folks from some of the care homes are invited to have tea in school – to give them a change of scenery (and what great scenery we’ve got here!), to give them a chance to meet up with others, and often to be entertained by some of the school musicians.

One CAS project we’ve recently set up is bread-making for the Tuesday Club visitors – every fortnight, after they’ve come for tea, the bakers present each of them with a freshly baked loaf to take away with them. A great service, but also a great opportunity to develop a skill – our very own master baker Mr Richardson (self-taught and embarrassingly enthusiastic about all things bready) is setting expectations high.

It’s not just about shoving some pre-ordained recipe in the ovens: the students are learning about yeast and water content and different flours and … other stuff about baking… (note to self: go along sometime and find out).

So, win-win education: learning, serving, fun.

Bryanston pupils in the Conran kitchen.