It’s not hard to find effusive supporters of the International Baccalaureate (IB). Indeed, in these fraught days for politics and international relations, the IB’s vaunting of deep thinkers, community service and globalist approaches to education would seem more crucial than ever.

Those who take on the IB proclaim a form of education far removed from the exam-driven, knowledge-cramming approaches of other systems.

Why, then, isn’t it more popular?

In Scotland, only three schools offer the IB (it was four until recently, as will be explained later in this piece) - all in the independent sector. And only one - St Leonards School in St Andrews - offers the IB right the way through, from the start of primary to the end of secondary.

For Dr Michael Carslaw, headmaster at St Leonards, the benefits are clear: “Pupils are encouraged to think critically, independently and with curiosity, care and logic - essentially, they learn how to know how to ask the right questions and how to be equipped with the knowledge and life skills needed for the 21st century.”

Many commentators, when referring to the IB, mean the two-year IB Diploma for upper secondary pupils, which is the only aspect of the programme that some schools adopt. St Leonards, however, says running the IB from the start of primary school provides “a seamless and inspiring learner journey”, encompassing three IB programmes. The school plans to introduce a fourth at S5-6, the IB Career Programme, which has a more vocational focus.

“Once you get into the IB approach to teaching and learning, it is difficult not to become an enthusiast,” says Carslaw, who adds that another attraction is “being part of a global and growing [IB] network of around 5,000 schools in 150 countries worldwide”.

So why aren’t more schools running the IB? Tes revealed in 2018 that the 110 UK schools with IB courses for 16- to 19-year-olds represented only half the number in 2008, although pupil entries had gone up. This fall coincided with growing uptake of the IB internationally.

Several factors have been cited for this decline in the UK, such as underappreciation of the IB in the higher education system and hostility from Michael Gove during his time as Westminster education secretary. Former Conservative minister Lord Willetts said Gove disliked the IB because he thought it represented “rootless cosmopolitan education not grounded in the history of this country” .

Carslaw - whose school has run the IB Diploma since 2005 and gained accreditation over the past two years for the IB Primary (2017) and Middle Years (2018) programmes - plays down such factors, insisting that “the level of understanding of the IB Diploma in nearly all UK and Scottish universities is high”. Instead, he says, what may be off-putting are the demands that the IB places on a school, including the need for “significant investment” in professional development.

“Switching from a more traditional approach to teaching, particularly at secondary level, can be a major sea change, and is not without its stresses and strains. You certainly can’t go in half-heartedly,” he says.

Contrary to common belief, more than half of the schools around the world offering an IB programme are in the state sector - although it seems unlikely that Scottish state schools will add to their ranks any time soon. Yet Carslaw sees “a lot of transferability and potential for productive crossover between the values of the Curriculum for Excellence and the IB, particularly in primary and middle years - the gap isn’t as great as some might imagine”.

Going beyond the exam

At schools that have introduced only the IB Diploma, says Carslaw, there are examples where “staff and pupils have viewed it more as a ‘bolt-on’ rather than embedding and committing to a different approach to learning”.

“As a result, the IB can end up being restricted to an elite, high-performing group of pupils who are taught in a ‘similar but slightly different’ way from other pupils, who follow a more traditional approach to learning,” he adds. “This leads to perceptions of excessive workload for Diploma students.

“If viewed as a bolt-on in a school, the IB will always struggle and the [high] expense of the necessary professional development will be judged not to be worth it.”

Sir Anthony Seldon - vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham and author of The Fourth Education Revolution - wrote last year that, since its introduction in 1968, the IB has become “by a considerable margin, the best school curriculum and assessment system in the world”, and that “British education would be immeasurably richer if all schools were to adopt it”.

Seldon, a former head, argued that schools had “narrowed their focus to the passing of exams” and were “not attuned to the world of employment that young people will be facing”. The IB, he argued, “offers its students a much greater educational emphasis upon individual initiative, personal responsibility, imagination and problem-solving”.

That sort of view resonates at Edinburgh’s George Watson’s College, which for eight years from 2011 ran a unique experiment: it was the only school in Scotland to offer both Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) courses and the IB Diploma.

This year, however, the school decided to pull the IB after it looked like the minimum 20 pupils deemed necessary to make it worthwhile - a typical S5 cohort at George Watson’s has about 240 pupils - would not be forthcoming. Richard Travers, deputy head of the senior school for pupil enrichment and achievement, recalls the IB as a way of “broadening the offer to pupils at top end” and “exploring subjects in greater detail than a one-year Higher allows”. The school has lauded its twin approach as the best of both worlds, with SQA courses there if you wanted a conventional route for getting into university, and the two-year IB Diploma an attractive alternative for a minority.

Melvyn Roffe, principal at George Watson’s, says that one “big difference” between any UK system - whether that entails Highers and Advanced Highers in Scotland or A levels elsewhere - and the IB is the “consistency of the ethos and the values” of the IB: specifically, IB learners must aspire to be “inquirers”, “knowledgeable”, “thinkers”, “communicators”, “principled”, “open-minded”, “caring”, “risk-takers”, “balanced” and “reflective”.

The obvious response is that Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence highlights values - its four capacities are based on four Unesco “pillars of education”- but Roffe sees a “complete disjuncture” between the aspirations of the IB and the more prosaic, exam-driven demands that UK pupils typically face in the latter part of secondary school. The Scottish qualifications system works “perfectly adequately”, says Roffe, but the IB “obliges the student to take control of their learning, and none of the [UK] domestic systems reward that - quite the reverse, [although] there’s a lot of lip service to it”.

Emilie Robinson, principal teacher of global education and IB coordinator at George Watson’s, says there is a “vast difference” in pupils’ experiences of languages through the IB. Robinson, who comes from Quebec and is herself a languages teacher, says the IB requires pupils to think far beyond the mechanics of passing an exam, even though exams still make up the majority of assessment in the IB Diploma.

Pupils delve deep, for example, into different experiences of language in francophone countries across the world, says Robinson, as well as into issues such as linguistic diversity, political identity or colonialism and how that shapes people and culture. They also cannot use a dictionary in exams, unlike pupils taking SQA languages exams all the way up to Advanced Higher.

Overall, says Travers, the Scottish qualifications system is “more transactional”, although still “a very, very good way of getting kids to the next destination”. The IB is presented to pupils, then, as a way of receiving a “more rounded” education, which will get them thinking more deeply before (for most) starting at university.

Longer trip, same destination?

The problem with that, of course, is that it may sound unnecessarily high-minded to a pupil who just wants to get their ticket to their next step in life by the easiest, most efficient route possible - as Roffe recognises. Whatever successes there have been with the IB since 2011, at least 90 per cent of pupils each year have travelled the traditional route of SQA qualifications.

“We are selling a longer trip to apparently the same destination. We might say that it’s a trip where you’ll see more sights, and there’s a better commentary on the bus, but if you’re not really interested in going all the way round the back lanes, and seeing the sights ... that was the big difference,” says Roffe.

However, the pupils at George Watson’s who have taken the IB are not a homogenous group of academic high-fliers - staff say there have been all sorts of reasons for choosing it. One pupil, for example, suffered from social anxiety and liked the idea of smaller classes; another was attracted by the “unbelievable” theatre course it entailed; some were not sure about what they wanted to do after school, so the breadth of the IB - it comprises six subjects - held appeal; one pupil said: “I want an education that has a purpose, as opposed to just sitting exams.”

Travers admits that it is not a perfect qualification: some say the sciences approach in IB is more didactic than for other subjects, while some pupils have been put off by the impossibility of taking biology, chemistry and physics together in the IB, although two sciences can be combined with maths.

The “jewel in the crown” of the IB Diploma, believes Travers, is the community action projects that pupils embark on. It has taken pupils to work in places as diverse, for example, as refugee camps in Calais and in among Italian underground frescoes.

An extended 4,000-word essay is also an integral part of the IB Diploma, which has involved pupils covering topics as diverse as the Amritsar Massacre’s influence on nationalism in India, Hungarian folk music and the relevance of Simone de Beauvoir’s feminism in the 21st century.

Staff at George Watson’s say this academic-style research has been great preparation for university. One former pupil, who became an Edinburgh Napier University student and the deputy editor of a food magazine, told the school that “the [IB] experience undoubtedly prepares you well for academia [and] I reckon that it’s equally valuable as character-building for life as a whole”.

There have, however, been a “couple of disasters”, which resulted in pupils dropping the IB to switch to other qualifications.

“If you can’t self-discipline, if you can’t time-manage - do not do the IB,” says Robinson. “The onus is on you as a pupil, so if you aren’t quite there maturity-wise or you don’t have the skills - or if you’re lazy - it’s a trainwreck for you. There’s no cramming possible. It doesn’t suit every kid.”

And what about the impact on teachers? It is certainly not an easy option, as Robinson explains: “It’s way more work - you’re basically developing a two-year course based on your interests, your background, your experience and the pupils in front of you.”

But she believes the IB has been “hugely empowering for teachers” and, despite its demise in the school, “will certainly have a lasting legacy”.

Teachers say they have changed how they ask questions and lead classes, that there is now more critical thinking in their classrooms, that they encourage more discussion, are more comfortable letting pupils go off and do things - they are coming off script and putting the onus on pupils to do more thinking.

“A lot of staff say it has rejuvenated their teaching,” says Robinson. “You do feel like you have freedom, like you have a say - you’re taken for a professional. You have free rein to decide what your curriculum is, as long as you cover certain things.”

All of which begs the obvious question: why is George Watson’s dropping the IB?

The reasons, say staff, are largely external and beyond the control of the school. The introduction of annual fees of up to £9,000 to attend university in England (now £9,250), while Scotland resisted the introduction of fees, has meant that pupils are now more inclined to go into higher education north of the border. This has led to a drop-off in interest in the IB, with pupils preferring the tried-and-tested SQA route into university.

There have also been problems with English universities, however: universities both north and south of the border, say staff at George Watson’s, and universities and admissions service Ucas do not recognise the difficulty of the IB. Meanwhile, independent schools are now focusing on consolidating their business amid the uncertainty of Brexit and the Barclay review of rates reform in the independent sector. The extra cost of running the IB, for a diminishing band of students, holds less appeal than it did a few years ago.

Even so, the enthusiasm for the IB at George Watson’s remains in principle, and the school does not rule out reintroducing it in the future.

In short, says Robinson, the IB “is what education should be - but it is scary in some ways”.

Henry Hepburn is news editor at Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 20 September 2019 issue under the headline “To IB, or not to IB: that is the question”