The IB Decline

First year IB student Madeleine Bishop discusses this year’s (rather pathetic) IB intake numbers—and the course’s girl-dominated demographic.

Worldwide, the number of schools offering the IB Diploma has increased by 7.85% this year. According to the Guardian, last year’s IB students made up about 1.2 per cent of pending qualifications for university applications – up from 0.8 per cent in 2008. Both the number of institutions offering IB, and the number of students taking it is increasing. Why, then, did the number of students who enrolled for it at the college this August drop so drastically?

Like, seriously. We have one boy (“We’re devastated,” says Jess, first year IB student) and a grand total of 27 students altogether. As an IB student I’m pretty concerned. Is there some secret, previously unknown flaw that’s come to light, that I’m somehow not party to? Our classes are unprecedentedly small this year - only one person enrolled in IB Physics. (Alright, it’s Physics. But .)

Okay, the IB’s not for everyone. I’ve heard the horror stories about the second year workload. We have compulsory DofE. The classes are pretty small anyway. But there’s more to it than that!

• No external exams in the first year

• It’s really well recognised, especially in the US

• The average IB student at the college achieves a point score of 34, equivalent to a UCAS of more than 4 A grades at A Level

• The grade boundaries for IB are managed centrally from Geneva - not by the British government, who (let’s face it) very much have a political agenda. As a result, grading etc, has remained consistent for nearly 20 years! 

Beyond the more surface level, academic type stuff, the IB has a really cool community of generally lovely, motivated people. One misconception is that everybody in IB has genius-level smarts, but in reality, you just have to be prepared to put a bit of work in - work which actually pays off.
Maybe people are put off by the forced language/maths/science option. The thing is, there’s basically some cop-out options for all of those if they’re not your forte.

• Taking an ab initio in Spanish or Italian is like taking language back to year 7 - while it’s useful and worthwhile, the courses aren’t advanced. It’s conversational. 

• Maths Studies Standard is the most popular maths option among IB students - the Higher is only for the Einstein inclined and is notoriously closer to a university level than A Level. Studies is much more manageable, and focuses more on statistics and uses of maths. 

• Environmental Systems and Societies is the Standard level for the un-sciencey. A mix of Geography and Biology, it’s still science, and interesting, but less full on. 

Beyond the curriculum (and I have to say, I’m an advocate of the well-rounded approach), there’s an early advantage for IBers… Making friends! I guess a lot of people come to the college with a fully formed friendship group, but that wasn’t really the case for me. Just one close friend came here with me, and we only share one free a week. Being in the IB meant that there was a consistent overlap of students between classes, so everyone was acquainted really quickly. With frees here, there and everywhere, it’s great to have a large group of people you immediately know and can have lunch with. It’s a way to find a niche within the wider (very wide) community of the college at large.
I would like to point out at this point that although there’s a reputation for IB having a lot of drop outs - thus far, only one student went over to the Dark Side, and, get this… She came back!


"At the start I found IB quite overwhelming,” says Megan Kiddy, our resident re-enrolled student (and former traitor). “But actually you get used to it really quickly. I found the IB had a wider range of subjects and more of a family vibe - my short stay in A Levels was far less friendly.”

See? Megan loves it. So it’s still a bit unclear to me why the numbers in-college have gone down while they’re increasing everywhere else. This year was a 50% drop and (forgive me for going on about it) but a boy-girl ratio of approximately 1:10 has soared to… 1:26. Seriously, we’re boy-starved.

I wonder why the IB demographic is so girl-dominated? Are we girls more prepared to take up something that screams “hard work”? Or is it because boys are still, somehow, generally more inclined to science-based subject choices, which perhaps work better at A Level than IB? 

  

“Because of its innate structure,” says Mike Flower, personal tutor for an IB form this year, “The IB is non-specialist. In my experience, boys are more prone to specialising earlier on, taking a route specifically tailored towards science or language, for instance. Why are they doing this? And are they doing it too early? It’s hard to say. 

  

“As for the IB decline this year, I wonder whether transport costs  are a factor. We used to get a lot of IB students travelling in from long distances for the course, but due to the recession those in that situation may hesitate to do so now. Also, A Levels did go through a period of bad press which may have encouraged more IB subscription for a short time. 

  

“I think that the IB suffers from a lack of publicity - it’s an amazing educational experience, but is it being endorsed enough at the secondary school level? In particular, there’s a lingering misconception that it’s for high achievers only, when in fact middle achievers may benefit the most.”

  

Basically, A Level students, if you work out that someone’s from first year IB, be our friends! We’d appreciate a little diversity in our society. Boys welcome.