AP vs. IB Program: What it's like to teach Advanced Placement compared to International Baccauleate

As a North American secondary teacher you are probably vaguely aware of the Advanced Placement (AP) program and the International Baccauleate (IB) program, even if they aren’t offered at your school. If you are looking for a job at a school that offers one of these curriculums, whether it be a public, private or international school, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with what the curriculum looks like and how offering that curriculum can effect the culture of the school.

As an American student, I took a number of AP courses and I’ve taught in a school that offered AP. The international schools that I taught in in Switzerland, Singapore and Germany were IB schools, so I’m very familiar with both programs. In this post I’ll give you an overview of each program and then some more information for language teaching so you can see what the AP vs. IB program is like.

The Advanced Placement Program

The AP program was created by the College Board, a US organization that administers the SAT entrance exam. It consists of a range of individual courses (40 were available at the time of writing) for high school students to take. Schools decide which individual courses to offer and students can choose as little as one course or as many as their school allows.

Courses are one semester or one year long. They can be taken at any age, although most students take them in grades 11 and 12. I know some schools that have had students take AP classes as 8th graders (Spanish classes for heritage speakers) but I don’t think it is developmentally appropriate for 8th graders to be in AP classes.

If students pass the test in May they earn different amounts of college credit (although each university decides if and how to accept the credit). Students are evaluated on a score of 1 (low) to 5 (high) and most universities give credit for a scoring a 3, 4 or 5.

The International Baccalaureate Program

The International Baccalaureate Program was founded in 1968, with the goal of having a curriculum that was child-centered with a global worldview and would be recognized around the world for students who were learning outside of their home country (children of military and diplomatic families, for example). Many cutting-edge, out-of-the-box educators like Kurt Vaughn were involved in the creation of the IB and its first few years.

There are now around 6,000 IB schools worldwide. You can search for IB programs in a specific country here.

“All the IB programmes include four foundational and interrelated elements: international mindedness, the IB learner profile, a broad, balanced, conceptual and connected curriculum and approaches to teaching and learning.”

IB is for more than just secondary students. There are four different IB programs that schools can offer. They must offer at least one of these programs but they do not have to offer all of them. The most popular is the Diploma Program for 16-18 year olds.

Primary Years Program (PYP)

This is for students ages 3-12, and can include up to grade 5 or 6, depending on the school. It is inquiry-based, and very child-centered. Within a rough, preset theme, students’ questions help drive the curriculum, making it relevant and timely. From seven years old, student are required to have language learning as part of the curriculum.

Each school develops their own curriculum, a program of inquiry that revolves around six interdisciplinary themes. The six themes are:

Who we are
Where we are in place and time
How we express ourselves
How the world works
How we organize ourselves
Sharing the planet

This program of inquiry is a broad framework, and some schools will incorporate specific, pre-packaged reading or math programs into their days. Other schools will not. If a state or country mandated a specific curriculum it could still be used within the IB PYP framework.

In the last year of the program, students have a PYP exhibition, where they research a question in a group and present their findings to the school community.

Middle Years Program (MYP)

The MYP is for students ages 11-16, usually grades 5/6 to 10.

There are 8 subject groups and each subject group must have at least 50 hours of teaching over the course of a year. Some schools give these subject groups an equal amount of time and other schools have some subjects meet more often than others.

Language acquisition (an additional language)
Language and literature (usually the language of the school)
Individuals and societies (social studies)
Sciences
Mathematics
Arts (drama, music and/or art)
Physical and health education
Design (the design cycle is the focus so it could include robotics, cooking, woodworking, etc.)

Once a year students must participate in an interdisciplinary unit that includes at least two subjects. For example, at one school I worked at the music and design teachers teamed up to have students create their own musical instructions. Students must do a long-term individual project in the last year of the program.

Within each subject group students are assessed on four strands that are given equal weight. Teachers are required to assess each of these strands at least twice a year. Things like participation and homework and not part of these, so it is much more similar to standards-based grading than a mathematically-calculated percentage.

The MYP has been the most controversial of the IB programs. Some criticism has been that it is too broad and not specific enough to prepare students for the very topic-specific DP. Much of the curriculum design is left up to schools or teachers, and the idea is that it is broad enough to allow schools to teach their local or national curriculums also.

There are now MYP e-assessments which are standardized tests that students can take in the last year if the school offers this option. This can be helpful for students from countries where a leaving certificate or similar proof of completion is required, but it also makes for a lot more stress for students and forces teachers to “teach to the test”.

Diploma Program (DP)

The DP is built on the idea of preparing students for a tertiary education anywhere in the world. The program lasts two years and students study the same courses for two years, giving them more depth than in an AP course. There are six subject groups, and students must take one course from each group, with the exception of Group 6, Arts. If they don’t want to take an arts course they can take a second subject in another group, so they could take two science classes or a history class and an business class from Group 3. Students must take 3 courses at the standard level and three courses at the more difficult higher level.

Group 1: Language and Literature
Group 2: Language Acquisition
Group 3: Individuals and Societies
Group 4: Sciences
Group 5: Mathematics
Group 6: Arts

In addition to these courses, students must take a course called Theory of Knowledge, which is a bit like a philosophy of learning course. They must also complete an Extended Essay in a subject of their choice. Additionally, they must participate actively in the CAS program, earning hours for Creativity, Action, and Service in the school and community.

The program requires a lot of discipline and hard work.

Career-Related Program (CP)

The Diploma Program is a very rigorous program, and the truth is that it’s not something that is accessible to every student. The most selective, academically focused schools offer only the Diploma Program. Many schools that offered only the DP soon realized that they needed another program to ensure that all students could be successful and graduate (although many schools also offer their own school diploma and/or non-IB courses).

The CP is still fairly new, as it was relaunched as a new program in 2014 and allows students to go on to higher education or into the work force.

The requirements are take at least two DP courses in any subject group, a career-related study like an internship and the CP core with consists of four parts:

Personal and Professional Skills
Community Engagement
Reflective Project
Language and Cultural Studies

IB DP v. AP

The IB DP program is much more complicated to implement than the AP program, because it encompasses the whole school and a minimum number of classes, whereas schools can implement AP courses one at a time. The IB is much more of an international, global curriculum and the AP is very much US-based.

Because the IB courses are for two years, they are much more in depth than the AP courses. However, this also means that students lose the options to take more of a variety of courses in their last two years of high school.

As a teacher teaching one of these courses for the first time, both programs have a clear, well layed out syllabus.

Teachers teaching any new IB course or program should ask their school for training, specifically to attend an IB workshop. Training is also available for AP, but AP is generally easier for teachers to learn without special training.

IB Language Acquisition V. AP Language

For language teachers, the IB and AP programs are not that different, because good language teaching generally covers the same aspects of communication, grammar, culture, etc. Obviously teachers need to become familiar with the assessments, but in general I think language teachers have it a lot easier than teachers of other subjects.

The AP Language and Culture class requires students to have a high level of language proficiency and is usually offered as 5th year class, although some schools offer it as a 4th year class (but I wouldn’t recommend that!). There is no other option for students at lower levels to take an AP language course.

There is also an AP Language and Literature course offered for Spanish but not for other languages, I assume because there is just not enough demand for it.

In IB there are three options for language acquisition:

Ab Initio courses that start from the beginning and require no prior knowledge of the language
Standard Level (SL) courses for students who have had a couple years of the language and are intermediate learners
Higher Level (HL) courses for students who have had many years of the language and are advanced learners.

These courses are very similar in their assessment and requirements, except that the HL course requires the reading of two literary works originally written in the target language.

Students who are native or heritage speakers of a language other than the language of the school may choose to do a self-taught language, a course that the school helps facilitate.

I hope this post has been helpful if you are thinking about teaching one of these curriculums. If you are looking to teach in an international school, take this fun quiz to find out where you should teach!