The Foreign Service Journal, December 2006

a student’s perspective, every school will look and feel different. This tends to reflect the culture, traditions, infrastructure and experience of the faculty who take and deliver our pro- grams. We welcome this diversity of schools in the IB community and would be disappointed if our contri- bution to international education was to create a ‘global sameness,’ in the same way you might expect a beef burger to look and taste the same any- where in the world.” Al-Haddad con- cedes that “good education is much more complex than that,” yet goes on to assert: “Our assessment standards are high and consistent ... universities worldwide understand what an IB Grade 7 means, wherever the student comes from.” School size can make a difference, of course. A larger program with more course offerings and several sec- tions of the same subject may trans- late into higher student (and parent) satisfaction with the program. Says Cambridge student Curtis, “Every IB school is different. Each offers a dif- ferent set of subjects, and it’s impor- tant to check that your interests are satisfied. Also, some have serious scheduling conflicts. At Kungshol- men Gymnasium (Stockholm), for example, no one could take both biol- ogy and physics because they conflict- ed in the schedule, so an aspiring bio- medical engineer might have been in a bit of a jam. This is exacerbated by the disadvantages of the two-year sys- tem. In a U.S. school, the scheduling conflict could be avoided by offering biology one year and physics the next. Larger IB programs can generally escape such conflicts.” IBO’s al-Haddad acknowledges that “a student transferring from one school to another would be wise to check out subject availability in advance.” But al-Haddad insists that the high standards of the IB diploma should not vary much between schools, no matter what the size or course offerings. “It would not be fea- sible for every school to offer every subject, and so the choices that a school makes will typically be driven by student demand, staff and local resources. However, certain popular subjects will be found in nearly every IB school, and all schools have to offer at least one subject from each of the IB subject groups, as well as the core elements of the Extended Essay, CAS and Theory of Knowledge.” Still — as in any school anywhere — one bad teacher can diminish the quality of the experience. One stu- dent who is generally very positive about the IB Diploma Program laments: “Theory of Knowledge is another opportunity for interesting, 104 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT (Continued from page 101) Continued on page 106