IB Introduction
History: The International Baccalaureate Organization was founded in Geneva, Switzerland in 1968 as a non-profit educational foundation.
Mission: The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the IB works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.
Main activities: The IB works in four areas:
- Development of curriculum
- Assessment of students
- Training and professional development of teacher
- Authorization and evaluation of schools.
Size: The IB works with 2734 schools in 138 countries to offer the three IB programs to approximately 753,000 students with more than 50,000 teachers, 5000 examiners and around 400 staff in 12 IB offices worldwide.
Programmes: The IB offers three programmes for students aged 3 to 19. The programmes can be offered individually or as a continuum by IB World Schools.
- The Primary Years Programme (PYP) for students aged 3-12 started in 1997 and is now offered by 576 IB World Schools in 83 countries.
- The Middle Years Programme (MYP) for students aged 11-16 started in 1994 and is now offered by 738 IB World Schools in 75 countries.
- The Diploma Programme (DP) for students aged 16 to 19 started in 1968 with first examinations in 1970 and is now offered by 2005 IB World Schools in 135 countries with over 500,000 graduates since 1970. It is a challenging two-year curriculum that is widely recognised by leading universities throughout the world.
(Source - www.ibo.org, Oct 2009)