The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a non-profit education company founded in 1968 in Geneva to challenge the traditional education model, which relied upon memorization, hermetic subjects, and IQ tests, and was teacher-centered and taught from a national perspective. The IB purposefully deviated in encouraging: critical analysis, student choice, transdisciplinarity, range of skills testing in order to provide a child-centered approach, educating the whole child from multiple perspectives.
The organization has evolved and grown significantly over the past fifty five years with 5,700 schools in 160 countries offering IB. 46% of these schools are in the Americas, 23% are in Africa, Europe, Middle East, and 31% are in Asia-Pacific. The curriculum educates students from ages 3 to 19 through the Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (DP), and Career-related Programme. Newman uses MYP in grades 7-10 and DP in grades 11-12. Importantly, the IB gives teachers significant flexibility to shape curriculum, while adhering to program standards.
Partnerships with fellow IB schools is a benefit, and The Newman School recently hosted five students and two teachers from Jac. P. Thjisse College in the Netherlands for a week.