Whether they like it or not

Hello, IB programme.

We had some inkling of what was going to happen last week when one of the PAL students came to me and asked what level of English he should be doing next year. I was baffled because AS doesn’t have levels, and my learned colleague, Mr V, didn’t know, either. The student went away and came back with a form which had a list of options for next year, including IB standard or higher level English. First we’d heard of it and our initial assumption was that this was testing the waters.

Since then, it’s been confirmed that the AS classes will be doing some sort of IB English. This has not been greeted enthusiastically by High Command even although I think it’s a good idea myself. Of course, I speak from the experience of ten years of fairly obnoxious Senior 2 classes. If students know they’re going to get something out of a class, they may be less indifferent to it.

On the other hand, I’m not so addle-brained as to believe this is going to be a panacea. There will still be quite a few students who remain indifferent in spite of a nice piece of paper to be got at the end of the course, and there will be one or two for whom it’s beyond their intellectual competence.

As for me, I don’t know whether I’ll be going over to the IB programme (that’s the current idea) or whether I’ll be staying with the A-level programme and incidentally teaching IB English. Either way, there will be training for it in exotic locations.