Curriculum Overview

The International Baccalaureate Organization’s (IBO) Middle Years Program (MYP) provides a framework of academic challenge and life skills for students aged 11-16 years. The five-year program offers an educational approach that embraces yet transcends traditional school subjects.

Students at this stage—early puberty to mid-adolescence—are in a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development. This is a time of uncertainty, sensitivity, resistance, and questioning. An educational program needs to provide them with discipline, skills, and challenging standards, but also with creativity and flexibility. The IBO builds its program around these considerations, but it is also concerned that students develop a personal value system by which to guide their own lives, as thoughtful members of local communities and the larger world.

The fundamental concepts of the MYP are:

  • Intercultural Awareness
  • Holistic learning
  • Communication

In addition, the concept of balance is fundamental to the MYP.

The MYP program provides a thorough study of the traditional secondary school disciplines but it also emphasizes the interrelatedness of these disciplines.  This is illustrated in the following curriculum model:

In addition to showing the 8 subject areas, the curriculum model shows the five perspectives known as the Areas of Interaction that lie at the core of the MYP. These pervade and recur throughout the five years of the MYP, through the eight subject groups, and also through interdisciplinary teaching and projects, whole school activities, and the MYP Personal Project

MYP Assessment

Teachers assess student work with guidance from the IBO according to prescribed, published criteria that state final levels of achievement in each discipline.

MYP Personal Project

The Personal Project is the culmination of a student’s work with the Areas of Interaction, and it has an important role to play in the curriculum. Completion of a Personal Project is undertaken by each student in the final year of the MYP (Year 5 or Grade 10).

MYP Certification

Students at IST who complete years 4 and 5 of the MYP (Grades 9 and 10) will receive official International Baccalaureate certificates. These certificates are given to students who meet the following criteria:

  • gained at least a grade 2 in all 8 MYP subjects
  • gained at least a grade 3 for the Personal Project
  • have participated in the MYP for Grades 9 and 10
  • have met the IST expectations for Community and Service
  • have gained a total of 36 points (out of a possible 63 points) for their grades in all 8 subjects and the Personal Project

Students who complete Grade 9 and 10 at IST will also receive an official IBO Certificate of Achievement indicating the IBO-moderated grades that they have achieved in each individual subject.

Students who do not have a Language A in grades 9 and 10 will not be eligible for the official IB certificate.

Students who do not attend IST for both Grade 9 and Grade 10 but who complete a Personal Project and 8 subjects at will receive an internal (IST) certificate for their completion of the MYP.

Note: This information about the IB Middle Years Program has been obtained from the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) website at www.ibo.org.