International Baccalaureate (IB)

1 Where it came from

The IB is an international organization that writes the programs; schools around the world offer them. By its own figures, as of May 2026 it runs more than 8,900 programs in over 6,200 schools in more than 160 countries, serving over 1.95 million students aged 3 to 19. The research behind this page could not open the IB's own program pages, so the detail here comes from IB brochures, a school regulator and school sites, and is kept to what they say.

2 The big ideas

• Learning starts from a question. Units are built around inquiry, so children investigate before they are told.
• Subjects connect. The PYP in particular is transdisciplinary: one unit can draw on science, language, math and the arts at once.
• Students show what they can do on their own. Each program ends in an independent piece: the PYP Exhibition, the MYP personal project, the DP Extended Essay, the CP reflective project.
• Thinking about knowing. In the Diploma, the Theory of Knowledge course asks students how we know what we claim to know.
• Learning reaches beyond the classroom. Service is built in, through Creativity, Activity, Service in the Diploma and service learning in the CP.

3 What a lesson looks like

Here is what a unit might look like in a 3rd-grade PYP class. The class spends about six weeks on one big question, say, how people use water. It opens with something to wonder about: a photo of a dry riverbed, a tap left running. Children write their questions on sticky notes and sort them on the wall. Over the following weeks the question pulls in several subjects. In math they measure how much water a dripping tap wastes in an hour and make a bar graph. In reading they work through short articles and a picture book about a well. In science they test which soil holds water best. Every week or so they stop and write in a reflection journal: what did I find out, what am I still wondering? The unit ends with groups showing what they learned to another class. In a Diploma classroom at 17, the same habits look older: a chemistry student plans her own lab investigation, then in Theory of Knowledge the class argues whether a scientific result can ever be certain, and she spends months on an Extended Essay on a question of her own choosing. (The details of these scenes are an illustration; each school writes its own units.)

4 Reading and math

The IB does not supply one reading or math method for the PYP; schools teach these within their own units and often use their own reading and math programs alongside. In the Diploma, mathematics is one of six subject groups, beside language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences and the arts.

5 The adult's job

IB teachers plan their own units within the program's framework, so a lot depends on the school. In an inquiry unit, much of the work is setting up good questions and resources and then helping students find and judge answers. At home, the most useful thing a parent can do is take children's questions seriously and ask them to explain what they found, rather than reteach the unit.

6 How progress is checked

In the younger programs, assessment is mostly the school's own, through projects, presentations and reflections, ending in the PYP Exhibition and the MYP personal project. The Diploma has six subject groups (language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, the arts) plus the core: Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay, and Creativity, Activity, Service. Diploma and CP students sit external exams and submit coursework; for the CP, the IB moderates a sample of reflective projects.

7 Strengths and criticisms

8 What the research says

The research behind this page did not find independent studies of how IB students do compared with others, and the IB's own website refused automated reading, so we have no outcome findings to report. What the sources do establish is the structure: four programs, the six Diploma subject groups and three-part core, the CP's four-part core of reflective project, service learning, language development and personal and professional skills, and the scale the IB itself reports. The broader learning research does back some of the habits the IB uses, such as asking deep explanatory questions, which a US government practice guide rates as having strong evidence, but that is evidence for the habit, not for the IB as a whole.

9 How to try it

1. Start a question wall. For one week, write down every question your child asks about one topic, then pick one to find out about together.
2. Try a simple unit. Take a big idea (water, homes, how things move) and touch it from three subjects: a book, a measurement and a drawing or model. A graphic organizer such as a KWL chart keeps it in one place.
3. Keep a reflection journal. After a project, ask three questions: what did you find out, what was hard, what would you do differently?
4. Visiting an IB school? Ask to see a unit planner, how reading and math basics are taught, and what last year's PYP Exhibition or personal projects looked like.
5. Older student? Practice a small research project: choose a question, find three sources, and write a page with the sources listed, as a warm-up for an Extended Essay or personal project.

10 Using Peabody with it

• Graphic organizer makerKWL charts, Venn diagrams and cause-and-effect charts for the question-led units the PYP and MYP use.
• Reading passagesShort science and social studies passages with questions, useful as sources inside an inquiry unit.
• Peabody libraryFree books for kids to read about a unit's topic on their own; it does not replace a school's IB units.
• Writing prompts by gradeInformative and opinion prompts that suit a reflection or end-of-unit write-up.

Peabody is free and has no ads. Pages on peabody.kids are for children; pages here are for the adults teaching them.

11 Programs that follow it

Programs and materials often named with this approach: Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (DP), Career-related Programme (CP).