| Why We Are Becoming an IB School |
| Written by Dr. Penberg | |||
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Schools evolve. Like the children we teach, they grow, change, and develop with time. Stagnation is a symptom of inertia, when schools resist growing and hold onto some static image of the past. At BFIS, 23 years young, we have always embraced change from our inception. We are a vital learning organization committed to evolving and adjusting to the shifting demographics of kids’ lives and the dynamics of international education. From a school of 300, in 10 years we have grown to 486. But our growth is not limited to size. Programmatically we are on the verge of a sea change, with regards to the kind of international school we are becoming. The International Baccalaureate program is at the heart of this. Three important questions underlie this: Why IB (and not AP)? How will it affect BFIS? Will all students be in the IB program? For many years the international AP program (Advanced Placement) was the program of choice for our international students, particularly American. What has changed in the ensuing years is the ascendancy of the IB program, which has gained substantial footing in Europe, Asia, and now the United States. The most significant measure of this has been agreements in a number of EU countries to recognize the IB diploma as equivalent to national graduation requirements. The most recent country to decide this is Spain. What this signifies for us as a school is that the IB program can be used in lieu of the Selectividad, as it is recognized by Spanish universities. We are choosing to become an IB program because we aspire to become nothing less than one of Europe’s best small schools. With this vision, we are aligning ourselves with the IB, which has become the gold standard of educational quality world wide. But what will we be losing and giving up as a school by jettisoning from AP? Nothing. IB’s philosophical foundation: global citizenship, interdisciplinary connections, community service, are tenets of what we have been building our school on for 23 years. Rather than an abandonment of our core values this is a way of fortifying them. How will it affect BFIS? The addition of the IB program will contribute to increasing our retention rates in middle and high school. At present there is a 20% yearly turnover with 25 % in the secondary level. Becoming IB will strengthen the academic quality of our high school, making it more rigorous and meaningful, and will contribute to providing a more balanced, intellectual and social emotional framework, and will eventually ensure a higher more diverse acceptance rate to U.S. and European colleges and universities. Will all students be in the IB program? All students will be part of the IB program, at a minimum they will participate in the certificate program. Not all will graduate with an IB diploma however. This academic year the focus will be about completing the IB application process and beginning to train teachers. By 2011 the year we are actually initiating the program, all staff will be trained. Evolving and shifting with the economic and educational climate does not mean that we abandon who we are and what we value. Our community, this wonderful sense of affiliation and our internationalism, this rich mix of diversity, are qualities that set us apart that we will never abandon or compromise. Becoming an IB school does not mean becoming anonymous or impersonal. Rather, it is the opportunity to become more of what we already are: communal, international, and geared towards producing the next generation of global citizens.
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 October 2009 10:17 |