The International Baccalaureate (IB), which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has — like its home town of Geneva — a slightly goody-goody reputation. Although not founded until the 1960s, it grew out of efforts to build a liberal infrastructure for postwar Europe.
It was inspired by a pamphlet written in 1948 by the French pedagogue Marie-Thérèse Maurette called ‘Do Education Techniques for Peace Exist?’ We don’t want our schools and universities creating swots who might just turn out like Josef Mengele, the IB seems to be saying, but well-rounded citizens of the world.
Nowadays, the IB is often sold by schools as a kind of academic Duke of Edinburgh scheme, involving a wider range of study than A-levels and including elements of culture and public service — though the latter is not formally assessed. IB pupils specialise less than A-level students do. They must carry on studying maths and science to some degree throughout the sixth form, and must complete a written assignment on a subject of their choice.
It is all very well selling the IB on its claimed character-building properties, but pupils who find themselves in the position of having to choose between the IB and A-levels might be motivated by more hard-headed questions: is it likelier to get me into a good university, earn me a better degree, and win me a higher-paying job at the end of it?
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) published a study that sought to answer these questions, and the results were flattering to the IB. It analysed the onward educational performance of 1.2 million pupils who sat A-levels and 48,700 pupils who took the IB diploma between 2007 and 2013, and discovered distinctly better results among the latter.
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