South Island School’s NEW IB Curriculum Offer

South Island School are proud to announce our brand new programme: the International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme (IBCP). This additional new offer will be for the current Year 11 student cohort that will be commencing Year 12 study in the 2017-18 academic year.

As the IB’s fourth programme, the IBCP provides a comprehensive qualification framework that links the academic rigour of the Diploma Programme with the career-related experiences of our BTEC courses to create a personalised, career-focused, post-16 pathway.

The IBCP is tailor-made for students who wish to engage in career-related learning.  It provides a combination of BTEC courses, IB Diploma elements (called Certificates) and IB core components. The IBCP is a university recognised qualification. Debra Von Bargen, Assistant Dean at Stanford University, says that Stanford “recognise the IB and related courses as solid preparation for university level work. At this time, because the course is still very new, few applicants to Stanford come from the IBCP programs, but were they to apply, we would certainly consider them. Like all applicants, they would need to present very strong academic credentials along with personal accomplishments and other qualities to be successful in our holistic review.”

For the vocational component of our offer, Pearson Hong Kong will provide a choice of 4 ‘major’ option (students choose one) BTEC Diploma courses in Business, Sport, Art & Design and Creative Media. These courses will make up approximately half of the IBCP programme. The IB Diploma courses a student may take (known as stand-alone ‘Certificates) can be selected from any Diploma Programme subject area, ideally to complement a student’s BTEC area of study. Students must opt to take at least two IB Diploma Certificates together with an IBCP ‘core’ which includes personal and professional development, a reflective project, service learning, and language development. These elements are all delivered and assessed by SIS and then externally moderated by the IBO.

Because of the ‘bespoke’ element of this qualification, students not wishing to take the full IBCP programme will still be able to elect to follow a combination of BTEC and IB Certificates – this reduced offer would not gain an IBCP but can still deliver very good University places in different parts of the world.

For more details, please visit: http://www.sisibcp.com/