For more than 50 years, the IB has equipped students with the skills, confidence and lifelong learning they need to thrive and make a difference in an ever-changing world. Through a powerful continuum of four student-centric programs developed for learners aged 3-19, IB programmes can be implemented independently or in combination. IB Continuum They are underpinned by shared values and a shared emphasis on developing students who are lifelong learners and who are able to not only make sense of, but to make a positive impact on, our complex and interconnected world. Central to all four of its programmes are: What is an IB Education?
- International-mindedness
- The IB learner profile
- A broad, balanced, conceptual, and connected curriculum
- An approach to teaching and learning centered on inquiry and positive agency
The MYP is unique in that it caters to the developmental needs of learners aged 11-16. It provides a framework of learning that emphasizes intellectual challenge and encourages connections between traditional subjects and the real world. The MYP focuses on “learning how to learn” through the systematic development of skills. An interdisciplinary approach addresses the developmental needs of students and prepares them for further academic study and life in an increasingly interconnected world. The MYP uses concepts and contexts as starting points for meaningful integration and transfer of knowledge across eight subject groups.
In order to implement any IB programme, schools must undergo an authorization process. The IB also offers a variety of professional development, certifications, and resources for its school community. Free resources are available for schools interested in learning more.
What Makes This Model Innovative?
Active Self-Direction
Relevance
Social Responsibility & Action
Goals
While the Learner Profile sets the goal for all IB programmes, the MYP has a unique set of outcomes for learners at this developmental stage. IB Learner Profile
Sense of Self
In the MYP, students explore identity; beliefs and values; personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health; human relationships including families, friends, communities and cultures; and what it means to be human.
Positive Agency
Students understand their potential for positive change through direct service, indirect service, and research or advocacy in their local communities. Students explore the approaches to learning (ATL) skills for self-management, research, communication, critical and creative thinking, and collaboration.
Intercultural Understanding
Students explore ways in which we discover and express ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs and values; the ways in which we reflect on, extend and enjoy our creativity; and our individual and collective appreciation of aesthetics.
Global Engagement
Students explore local, national, and international rights and responsibilities; the relationship between communities; sharing finite resources with other people and with other living things; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.
Experience
The Middle Years Programme framework illustrates how the MYP’s unique focus on learners in the middle grades intersects with the overall approach of the IB. MYP Framework Summary
Three main learner experiences—reflected in the middle layers of the framework—make up the MYP:
- Subject groups
- An interdisciplinary approach
- Personal or community projects
The MYP curriculum framework comprises eight subject groups, providing a broad and balanced education for early adolescents. These subject groups are:
- Language acquisition Language Acquisition
- Language and literature Language and Literature
- Individuals and societies Individuals and Societies
- Sciences Sciences
- Mathematics Mathematics
- Arts Arts
- Physical and health education Physical health and education
- Design Design
The MYP requires at least 50 hours of teaching time for each subject group in each year of the programme. In the final two years of the programme, students have the option to take courses from six of the eight subject groups, which provides greater flexibility,
Furthermore, subject group learning does not happen in silos; the MYP is an interdisciplinary programme. Together, subject groups and interdisciplinary units put learning in context and connect it to students’ lived experiences. Using global contexts, MYP students develop an understanding of their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet through developmentally appropriate explorations of:
- identities and relationships
- personal and cultural expression
- orientations in space and time
- scientific and technical innovation
- fairness and development
- globalization and sustainability
In each year of the programme, MYP schools are responsible for engaging students in at least one collaboratively planned interdisciplinary unit that involves at least two subject groups.
Interdisciplinary learning can take place between different subject groups and between different disciplines within a subject group to encourage broader perspectives on complex issues and deeper levels of analysis and synthesis. The MYP prescribes sixteen key interdisciplinary concepts along with related concepts for each discipline. Interdisciplinary connections must be meaningful. In the MYP, interdisciplinary learning is the process by which students come to understand bodies of knowledge and modes of thinking from two or more disciplines and then integrate them to create a new understanding. Students demonstrate this by bringing together concepts, methods, or forms of communication to explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product or raise a new question in ways that would have been unlikely through a single discipline. MYP schools must engage students in at least one collaboratively planned interdisciplinary unit in each year, in order to integrate knowledge and skills from two or more subject groups in an interdisciplinary manner.
Through the MYP projects, students experience the responsibility of completing a significant piece of work over an extended period of time. MYP projects encourage students to reflect on their learning and the outcomes of their work—key skills that prepare them for success in further study, the workplace and the community. There are two major projects in the MYP:
- Community project; which encourages students to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community. Students may complete the community project individually or in small groups. Service as action and
- Personal project; done independently, produces a personal and creative piece of work that stands as a summative review of their ability to conduct independent work. Personal Project Brief
MYP projects are student-centered and age-appropriate, and they enable students to engage in practical explorations through a cycle of inquiry, action, and reflection. MYP projects involve students in a wide range of activities. These student-planned learning activities include:
- deciding what they want to learn about, identifying what they already know, and discovering what they will need to know to complete the project
- creating proposals or criteria for their project, planning their time and materials, and recording developments of the project
- making decisions, developing understanding, solving problems, communicating with their supervisor and others, creating a final product or outcome and evaluating it, then finally reflecting on their project and their learning
As students become involved in the self-initiated and self-directed learning process, they will find it easier to construct in-depth knowledge on their topic, and develop an understanding of themselves as learners.
Supporting Structures
The MYP is a challenging framework that encourages students to make practical connections between their studies and the real world. The MYP is a five-year programme, which can be implemented in a partnership between schools, or in several abbreviated (two, three, or four year) formats. While schools have flexibility in ensuring the programme meets the needs of their local context, they must satisfy IB criteria for accreditation, assessment and quality assurance, which are detailed below, and in more depth in the Programme standards and practices documentation (see in Implementation section).
While schools have some flexibility around curriculum and assessment, there are some unifying approaches across all IB programmes.
The IB is committed to making sure that students in IB programmes meet and exceed local or national standards. With the implementation of any IB programme, schools are required to examine their curriculum carefully to ensure that there is alignment with local, state or national standards. Despite this adaptability given the context, there are some unifying themes in the approach to learning. Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills are deliberate strategies, skills and attitudes that permeate the IB teaching and learning environment. These consist of five categories of interrelated skills and associated sub-skills that support students of all ages to become self-regulated learners:
- thinking skills
- research skills
- communication skills
- social skills
- self-management skills
These interrelated skills aim to empower IB students of all ages to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them.
The MYP leverages both internal and optional external assessment (eAssessment). eAssessment Internally, teachers use a variety of assessment methods that are connected to stated learning objectives and outcomes and IB guidelines. Additionally, the MYP’s award-winning eAssessment provides a rigorous and standardized summative assessment option, in which students can participate in two types of examinations, ePortfolios of coursework or on-screen examinations. Understanding eAssessment This form of assessment provides invaluable support for schools that need external verification of student achievement, or for school districts to measure programme impact. Find out more about grading and awards: Grading and awards
The school community must support learners in realizing the IB Learner Profile.
While schools have the freedom to create a school culture that reflects the needs of their community, there are aspects that are essential to implementing the MYP. All students and families in a school building should be given access to the MYP and supported to reach their full potential. Together all stakeholders sustain a positive school culture, by committing to continuous school improvement, well-being and a safe and engaging environment that nurtures resilient, optimistic and lifelong learners.
IB World Schools seek to create an inclusive learning community that:
- lives peacefully together by engaging with different ways of knowing and being
- prioritizes people and their relationships
- assumes shared responsibility for learning, health, and well-being
These attributes foster internationally minded people who embody all attributes of the IB learner profile.
Teachers must be trained in approaches to teaching and learning and collaborate to make connections between subjects.
All MYP teachers receive professional development in the IB’s approaches to teaching and learning from certified IB workshop leaders. This is because the same six approaches to teaching underpin teaching in all IB programmes:
- based on inquiry
- focused on conceptual understanding
- developed in local and global contexts.
- focused on effective teamwork and collaboration
- designed to remove barriers to learning for all students
- informed by formative and summative assessment
The approaches are deliberately broad and designed to give teachers the flexibility to choose specific strategies to employ that best reflect their own particular contexts and the needs of their students.
All MYP classroom teachers are required to participate in collaborative planning and reflection to make their teaching practices consistent and to foster a holistic approach to education. They are supplied with the MYP planning process to collaboratively design, plan, deliver and document student inquiry.
The schedule must enable adequate subject group learning.
The school implements a schedule that provides for the minimum requirement of 50 hours of teaching time for each subject group.
Families and the larger community should have agency to transform the learning experience.
The IB learning community views the world as the broadest context for learning, where everyone involved in the life of the school is recognized as part of the learning process: students and their families, all school staff members, other important adults in the students’ lives, and the community at large. Members of the learning community form the bridge that connects learning and teaching. Everyone in the learning community has the agency to influence and transform learning, which in turn supports students and the wider community in becoming internationally-minded.
Implementation of the IB requires that learning spaces be informed by pedagogy.
Learning environments are made up of multiple learning spaces: built and natural, outdoor and indoor, formal and informal. Spaces should inspire creativity, innovation and collaboration, support and respond to emerging inquiries, and help students to develop and demonstrate the attributes of the learner profile. Students should be involved in the setting up and ongoing maintenance of their learning spaces, for greater ownership and influence over their learning.
Technology should be leveraged to build strong citizens and deepen conceptual understanding.
Technology, the learner profile, and approaches to learning work together to develop internationally-minded digital citizens able to exercise academic integrity and practice safe and ethical behaviors. Students must understand the functionality of tools, how to operate tools and resources, and how technology can be used to problem solve, create new opportunities and communicate. Technology should enable unique opportunities for the learning community to co-construct knowledge and develop conceptual understanding with their school and broader community.
The implementation of IB programmes requires strong operations.
All students in a school building should be given access to the MYP and supported to reach their full potential.
The school funds and allocates resources that sustain and further develop its IB programmes. For the MYP, this means allocating adequate resources for the provision of leadership, developing the curriculum in subject groups, planning approaches to learning, supporting student involvement in service as action, and implementing the personal or community project. The IB is a permitted use of Title I, II, and IV funding and federal Perkins V fund, as well as federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding. Using federal funds
A digital toolkit can be used for communications.
The IB offers a digital toolkit which provides authorized schools with a wide range of communications materials. Digital toolkit These can be used to present the IB and its programmes to stakeholders such as students, parents, teachers and school boards, as well as universities and government bodies.
Both the IB and adopting schools must facilitate continuous improvement.
The IB gathers together a worldwide community of educators who share a common belief that education can help to build a better world. Each IB programme and curriculum undergoes regular review to help ensure that it delivers the best possible education for IB students, and this curriculum review process involves educators from many different cultures and backgrounds.
To maintain its status as an IB World School and to improve practice, it is up to schools to regularly review and follow all IB rules, regulations and guidelines. IB World Schools are required to regularly review systems and processes to improve the operation and sustainability of its IB programme delivery. The entire IB global community of schools participates in an ongoing process of review and development ensuring the continued quality assurance of the program/s delivered.
While schools have some flexibility around curriculum and assessment, there are some unifying approaches across all IB programmes.
The IB is committed to making sure that students in IB programmes meet and exceed local or national standards. With the implementation of any IB programme, schools are required to examine their curriculum carefully to ensure that there is alignment with local, state or national standards. Despite this adaptability given the context, there are some unifying themes in the approach to learning. Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills are deliberate strategies, skills and attitudes that permeate the IB teaching and learning environment. These consist of five categories of interrelated skills and associated sub-skills that support students of all ages to become self-regulated learners:
- thinking skills
- research skills
- communication skills
- social skills
- self-management skills
These interrelated skills aim to empower IB students of all ages to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them.
The MYP leverages both internal and optional external assessment (eAssessment). eAssessment Internally, teachers use a variety of assessment methods that are connected to stated learning objectives and outcomes and IB guidelines. Additionally, the MYP’s award-winning eAssessment provides a rigorous and standardized summative assessment option, in which students can participate in two types of examinations, ePortfolios of coursework or on-screen examinations. Understanding eAssessment This form of assessment provides invaluable support for schools that need external verification of student achievement, or for school districts to measure programme impact. Find out more about grading and awards: Grading and awards
The school community must support learners in realizing the IB Learner Profile.
While schools have the freedom to create a school culture that reflects the needs of their community, there are aspects that are essential to implementing the MYP. All students and families in a school building should be given access to the MYP and supported to reach their full potential. Together all stakeholders sustain a positive school culture, by committing to continuous school improvement, well-being and a safe and engaging environment that nurtures resilient, optimistic and lifelong learners.
IB World Schools seek to create an inclusive learning community that:
- lives peacefully together by engaging with different ways of knowing and being
- prioritizes people and their relationships
- assumes shared responsibility for learning, health, and well-being
These attributes foster internationally minded people who embody all attributes of the IB learner profile.
Teachers must be trained in approaches to teaching and learning and collaborate to make connections between subjects.
All MYP teachers receive professional development in the IB’s approaches to teaching and learning from certified IB workshop leaders. This is because the same six approaches to teaching underpin teaching in all IB programmes:
- based on inquiry
- focused on conceptual understanding
- developed in local and global contexts.
- focused on effective teamwork and collaboration
- designed to remove barriers to learning for all students
- informed by formative and summative assessment
The approaches are deliberately broad and designed to give teachers the flexibility to choose specific strategies to employ that best reflect their own particular contexts and the needs of their students.
All MYP classroom teachers are required to participate in collaborative planning and reflection to make their teaching practices consistent and to foster a holistic approach to education. They are supplied with the MYP planning process to collaboratively design, plan, deliver and document student inquiry.
The schedule must enable adequate subject group learning.
The school implements a schedule that provides for the minimum requirement of 50 hours of teaching time for each subject group.
Families and the larger community should have agency to transform the learning experience.
The IB learning community views the world as the broadest context for learning, where everyone involved in the life of the school is recognized as part of the learning process: students and their families, all school staff members, other important adults in the students’ lives, and the community at large. Members of the learning community form the bridge that connects learning and teaching. Everyone in the learning community has the agency to influence and transform learning, which in turn supports students and the wider community in becoming internationally-minded.
Implementation of the IB requires that learning spaces be informed by pedagogy.
Learning environments are made up of multiple learning spaces: built and natural, outdoor and indoor, formal and informal. Spaces should inspire creativity, innovation and collaboration, support and respond to emerging inquiries, and help students to develop and demonstrate the attributes of the learner profile. Students should be involved in the setting up and ongoing maintenance of their learning spaces, for greater ownership and influence over their learning.
Technology should be leveraged to build strong citizens and deepen conceptual understanding.
Technology, the learner profile, and approaches to learning work together to develop internationally-minded digital citizens able to exercise academic integrity and practice safe and ethical behaviors. Students must understand the functionality of tools, how to operate tools and resources, and how technology can be used to problem solve, create new opportunities and communicate. Technology should enable unique opportunities for the learning community to co-construct knowledge and develop conceptual understanding with their school and broader community.
The implementation of IB programmes requires strong operations.
All students in a school building should be given access to the MYP and supported to reach their full potential.
The school funds and allocates resources that sustain and further develop its IB programmes. For the MYP, this means allocating adequate resources for the provision of leadership, developing the curriculum in subject groups, planning approaches to learning, supporting student involvement in service as action, and implementing the personal or community project. The IB is a permitted use of Title I, II, and IV funding and federal Perkins V fund, as well as federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding. Using federal funds
A digital toolkit can be used for communications.
The IB offers a digital toolkit which provides authorized schools with a wide range of communications materials. Digital toolkit These can be used to present the IB and its programmes to stakeholders such as students, parents, teachers and school boards, as well as universities and government bodies.
Both the IB and adopting schools must facilitate continuous improvement.
The IB gathers together a worldwide community of educators who share a common belief that education can help to build a better world. Each IB programme and curriculum undergoes regular review to help ensure that it delivers the best possible education for IB students, and this curriculum review process involves educators from many different cultures and backgrounds.
To maintain its status as an IB World School and to improve practice, it is up to schools to regularly review and follow all IB rules, regulations and guidelines. IB World Schools are required to regularly review systems and processes to improve the operation and sustainability of its IB programme delivery. The entire IB global community of schools participates in an ongoing process of review and development ensuring the continued quality assurance of the program/s delivered.
Supports Offered
All schools offering the MYP must first participate in the candidacy and authorization process. The IB works with school communities on this journey toward creating a better world through education. The IB journey The IB supports schools in obtaining and sustaining the status of IB World School in a few ways. While there are costs associated, the programme can be funded using a variety of federal funds. Funding the IB toolkit
All IB World Schools use the Guide to School Authorization and the Programme standards and practices (PSP) framework to ensure quality and fidelity implementation of each IB programme. Guide to Authorization Programme standards and practices (PSP) The IB offers short, interactive PD courses to help schools gain insight into the PSP and how it is used to implement, grow and develop IB programmes. PSP learning resources
IB World School Authorization Process
Cost Associated, Funding Available
During the authorization process, the IB supports schools in building the understanding and organizational structures needed to implement the MYP as well as other IB programmes. Authorization support Authorization resource library If you are interested in implementing the MYP, please submit the online form to receive more information about how to become an IB school.
Professional Development
Cost Associated, Funding Available
The IB provides a range of professional development workshops that support educators and collaborative learning communities. The professional development opportunities include face-to-face and online workshops, webinars, blended learning and e-learning resources. These opportunities are open to both authorized schools and candidate schools. PD Offerings chart
IB Educator and Leadership Certificate (IBEC)
Cost Associated, Funding Available
The IB educator and leadership certificates help educators develop in many areas that benefit teaching and learning and deepen understanding of inquiry, research and project-based learning, among other things. IBEC FAQ
Reach
Impact
The IB Research department collaborates with universities and independent research institutions around the world to produce rigorous studies examining the impact and outcomes of the IB’s four programmes. Below are some key findings from recent studies relating to the MYP in the US.
There is evidence that PYP improves academic outcomes. MYP studies MYP Comparative study
- MYP students performed significantly better than students from non-IB schools in the International Schools Assessment (ISA) assessment areas at a number of grade levels
- Additionally, ISA mean scores for MYP students were significantly higher than the PISA mean scores in all three domains (Mathematical literacy, Reading and Scientific literacy)
Previous participation in the MYP resulted in improved high school enrollment and achievement. MYP’s impact on the DP
- MYP enrollment significantly increased the likelihood of earning a college-ready score on a college prep exam by 39%
- Students previously enrolled in the MYP were 34% more likely to take at least one Advanced Placement or IB Diploma Programme (DP) exam in high school
Finally, there are stories of impact coming directly from school communities. Pacific Beach Middle School story