In the past week the Westminster government has made two contrasting announcements on education policy, which shows, once again, that various British governments don’t really know what to make of the International Baccalaureate, the creature with tentacles in almost every country - except Russia - that dwells across the water in The Hague.
On the one hand, the funding for the IB Diploma in state schools in England is being cut and, on the other, ”V levels” are to be created, which, at this early stage, appear to be oddly similar to the IB Career-related Programme.
There have been moments when the UK government has been all for the International Baccalaureate: after all, in 2006 Tony Blair boldly stated that the IB Diploma should be made available in every state school. Even before that the Tomlinson report advocated something very, very similar. And there has been plenty of imitation.
Taking inspiration from the IB
Some of that imitation has been titular: the word “baccalaureate”, like the word “academy”, has been hi-jacked to give intellectual credibility to education initiatives. After all, the English Baccalaureate is a pretence at encouraging a broad curriculum and isn’t much more than a means of creating a hierarchy of subjects and a new form of weights and measure. Even before that, the Extended Project Qualification, devised by Mike Tomlinson in 2006, was nothing but an Extended Essay clone.
More recently, in 2023 the prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, tiptoed around the word “baccalaureate” with his never-to-exist Advanced British Standard (ABS), which was to replace A levels and T levels. Although the word wasn’t specifically used in this proposal, the similarity between the ABS and the IB Diploma Programme was obvious, if not an act of plagiarism: compulsory English and maths, a broader range of study, higher and lower subjects, more teaching time.
The only point of difference was that the ABS could only count as far as five subjects, whereas IB got to six. So the fact that the now-proposed V levels look a lot like the IB Career-related Programme (CP) is hardly surprising.
What V levels and the CP have in common
The CP was brought into action in 2014 to sit alongside the Diploma Programme (DP), offering students the chance to combine some of the DP subjects with more vocational courses. So “CP students gain transferable and lifelong skills in applied knowledge, critical thinking, communication and cross-cultural engagement - leading them towards higher education, apprenticeships and employment”.
And, to use the government’s own words, “V levels will sit alongside A levels and T levels and will offer a vocational alternative to these academic and technical routes” for students who want to “explore different sectors before deciding where to specialise”. Well, fancy that.
Of course, there are good reasons for the Department for Education or any politician who cares about education to gaze longingly upon the land of the International Baccalaureate. It’s not the perfect, Platonic form of an education system - I bear the scars - but it does have noble qualities.
More than just a qualification
It has an explicit, moral purpose: “The IB develops inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect.”
It has the aim of developing character and humanity through the Learner Profile. It encourages breadth of study, thought across that breadth, oracy and independent work and, in this country, it puts an end to the three-A-level narrowness that has beset us since the scientist and novelist CP Snow’s “two cultures” lecture.
The International Baccalaureate has a global reputation and freedom from the pressures and timescales of politics.
In the end, it’s not just a set of qualifications or a syllabus, or a form of measurement. It’s an education.
And that’s why the government’s decision to announce the end of funding for the IB Diploma is so striking, and disappointing.
The cost of the IB Diploma
Of course, the IB Diploma is more expensive than A levels. That’s mainly because the students are being taught more in more lessons, which can’t be a bad thing. After all, almost all universities now acknowledge that IB students are better equipped for university life and thereby do better.
It was argued on the floor of the House of Commons, however, that the money would be better spent on students who wanted to study four A levels, especially science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects. So it now seems that a hierarchy of subjects has been established - in a world where languages are in crisis and everyone agrees that communication and breadth of thought matter as much as scientific expertise.
The IB Diploma has been, for over 50 years, the only serious alternative to the dead hand of three A levels that has lain upon our state education system, and now even that seems to be on its way to extermination.
John Claughton is a former chief master of King Edward’s School, Birmingham, who introduced the IB Diploma to the school in 2010, and co-founder of WoLLoW (World of Languages, Languages of the World)
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