AMIDST the recent controversy surrounding a national curriculum and benchmarking for Australian schools, a handful of Perth’s schools has introduced an international curriculum program that offers both an alternative pathway to university and an internati
AMIDST the recent controversy surrounding a national curriculum and benchmarking for Australian schools, a handful of Perth’s schools has introduced an international curriculum program that offers both an alternative pathway to university and an international yardstick.
The International Baccalaureate diploma program, run through the International Baccalaureate Organisation, is now offered by four Western Australian high schools – Scotch College, the International School of WA, Treetop Montessori, and Perth Montessori School – with Presbyterian Ladies’ College to introduce the program next year.
Scotch College’s headmaster Andrew Syme, told WA Business News it was: “Certainly a business decision to offer the program; at a time when in the public press there was certain disquiet around changes in the curriculum in WA it gave us an alternative.”
Mr Syme said the school primarily adopted the program to offer choices to university-bound students, but there was also a business element to taking the program on board.
The IB program aims to create better global intercultural understanding through requisite language and theory of knowledge classes on top of standard subjects such as science.
Scotch College’s current crop of year 11 students are the first to be offered the program, with 12.5 per cent of the year group opting for the program over the traditional university pathway – the WA Certificate of Education and TEE exams.
While the IB program is credited for offering students an alternative path to university, PLC principal Beth Blackwood told WA Business News the school was introducing the curriculum for other reasons.
“There were three primary reasons we introduced the program: so that WA students have an education that is internationally minded and is benchmarked against students on an international level around the world. It also offered professional development opportunities for our staff and it ensures the curriculum we offer is rigorous,” Ms Blackwood said.
Mr Syme shares that sentiment.
“It is intellectually demanding and a dense program, it is different in its substance and it also has a very significant international recognition,” Mr Syme said.
“We are the first of the big schools and indeed I believe the only school to actually allow a choice of curriculum for university bound students.”
The International School of WA introduced the program for its own reasons.
The school’s IB coordinator, Damien Kerrigan, told WA Business News the program was introduced to cater to the school’s large contingent of international families, who travel globally for their work.
“Having the IB diploma program has definitely brought some local kids in and a lot of the parents that come to us are with oil and gas companies and they would possibly be less likely to have taken those job packages if they weren’t able to transfer their kid directly from one IB school to another,” Mr Kerrigan said.
Mr Syme said Scotch College was also catering to the need of a changing demographic.
”We had our mind on an internationalising Perth environment; changes in the Pilbara are an engine changer for a differing clientele and the IB certainly has appeal to local and international families,” he said.
The program’s advocates say it offers benefits that the existing WA curriculum does not.
The IBO’s Australian regional representative, Greg Valentine, said the diploma program allowed schools to benchmark their outcomes and results against world standards.
Last year, a report from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA, titled ‘Building a better tomorrow’, called for reform in the state’s education system to make it more responsive to the changing social and economic needs of WA.
“The national benchmarking should adopt an internationally comparable methodology as the basis for assessing academic achievement across the nation,” the CCI report stated in its recommendations.
While a CCI spokesperson said the report was not referring to the IB diploma but rather a national curriculum and assessment system, those advocating for the IB curriculum say it would meet those requirements.
Mr Kerrigan has been working with the IB diploma program for 12 years in Istanbul, San Francisco and Cambodia.
“It would absolutely offer the opportunity for students to be benchmarked nationally and internationally,” he said.
The program is pending recognition by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority – the national body for monitoring curriculum.
Mr Valentine said it was likely WA’s government schools would introduce the IB diploma program when the program was endorsed by ACARA.
“Many schools are waiting for the IBO to go through the process of becoming a recognised alternative to the Australian curriculum before they announce their candidature,” Mr Valentine said.