The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated our thinking in several key areas of education - especially  GCSEs.

From this, it is pleasing to see the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) receiving more attention - most notably from an excellent article on Tes by Emily Hardwicke, an assistant head at an international school in Switzerland, about the benefits and practicalities of teaching the MYP.

In her article, she noted there are currently just 15 in schools in the UK to teach the MYP. Wotton House International School, of which I am principal, is one of these 15.

Based in Gloucestershire with sites in the centre of Gloucester and at The Wilderness Centre in the Forest of Dean, we are the only MYP school in England outside London and the Home Counties.

Our experience of the MYP would match that of the teacher in the aforementioned article and I would repeat her call that the MYP is an ideal replacement for GCSEs.

A global offering

I have believed for some time that GCSEs are of questionable purpose and, now that we are engaging in a debate on the priorities for schooling, on traditional models’ effects on mental health, it is time for a wholesale reconsideration of the overriding purpose of educating our young people.

Many schools talk about building character, developing resilience, equipping pupils with 21st-century skills, emotional intelligence, mental wellbeing, global perspectives and understanding diversity.

Indeed, a lot of them are doing really great work on all of those issues in the few gaps in the curriculum that are available.

But what if it is the curriculum itself that is the source of many of these problems?

Do disconnected subjects, a lack of action-based learning, a curriculum heavily reliant on knowledge, with text-based skills assessed by high stakes tests, really give our young people the best footing from which to launch their lives?

Furthermore, with Brexit on the horizon and with Covid-19 speeding up our reliance on technology and our ability to connect with people digitally, now is surely the time to start thinking more internationally and set up an education system which readies our children for life in a different sort of world.

Suited for modern needs

Put it this way. If we were designing a curriculum from scratch, now, bearing in mind all we know about the detrimental impact of single-shot, high-stakes final exams on teenagers’ mental health, on our ability to discover facts at the click of a mouse and the resulting refocusing on experiential learning, on a changing world and Britain’s developing place in it… would that curriculum look like the mainstream one we currently have?

What if there was a curriculum which explicitly had global outlook, with service outcomes, diversity in assessments and no high stakes tests and which built up to a personal project which highlighted each student’s passions and strengths?

That’s what the MYP does.

It has been around since 1994 and is already used by 1,358 schools in 108 countries and, as I have said, I am pleased to see its benefits are growing in recognition here, too.

It is important to recognise that the MYP is not some kind of alternative, inferior education system.

In fact, it provides a robust, rigorous education which provides a platform for further study, either by continuing with the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma itself or for switching to the A-Level system.

Held in high regard

It should also be pointed out that the IB is exceptionally well-regarded by universities worldwide for its holistic, experiential approach to learning, as well as for the global outlook that it adopts.

I’m not suggesting that GCSEs do not work well in some situations. But our experience demonstrates that there is a growing argument for adopting a more progressive system of evaluating the progress of our children.

One which prioritises their needs for future growth, rather than satisfying a set of criteria which are becoming increasingly irrelevant in modern society.

Through the MYP, we place great emphasis on preparing our children for life in the outside world. We feel that five key failures of the standard model are that it does not to give sufficient account to the following dimensions of education: the social; the emotional; the technical and vocational; the fundamental non-linearity of the developmental processes; and the rapid, unprecedented changes to the future economic and social landscapes as a result of technology.

In my view, the best way to tackle these shortcomings is by using a programme which is designed to enable pupils to make practical connections between their learning and the outside world.

The MYP does that better than anything I’ve come across in more than two decades of working in education.

Dr Daniel Sturdy is principal at Wotton House International School in Gloucester. He has a degree in psychology from the University of Oxford and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Stirling