Any parent wanting their child to take the International Baccalaureate should be warned: the workload is going to be heavy. Prepare to hear your child whine about extended essays, and how their friends doing A-levels have it much easier.
The International Baccalaureate, or IB, requires pupils to take six main subjects alongside a mandatory course in Theory of Knowledge (basic epistemology), as well as a number of hours of creativity, action and service classes, and an interdisciplinary extended essay. Diploma candidates must take mathematics, a science, a first language as well as a second language (English can be either), a humanities subject and an arts subject. Three of the six are taken to a higher level. Some schools will allow pupils more than six subjects, but that’s showing off.
Some of the qualification’s detractors say that its sheer breadth produces superficial generalists with a transatlantic twang.
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