Would you consider an IB school?

[Cortina]

Are there are any UK schools that teach IB all the way through, from Primary Years Programme up?

From what I read a more holistic, creative approach to education could be a welcome change.

Is the National Curriculum too limiting, rigid and does it take account of the different learning styles people have?

In the IB diploma, you do three subjects at Higher level and three subjects at Standard level.

Read that as 3 subjects to A2 and the remaining 3 just to GCSE, as the standard level is not as hard as AS.

Now, in the British system, you tend to do something like 8 or 9 subjects to GCSE (merging the English language and literature into one for the sake of comparison), four at AS and three at A2, as well as the enrichment activities specified by IB (for TOK, substitute critical thinking).

Depending on the school, there can be real subject restrictions. For example, at the IB school near me, you can't do Geography (even looking at the Americanised subject names, Geography doesn't exist). You can only do two Sciences, one compulsory and one instead of practical Art.

So, it can look, on the face of it, a broad program, but as with anythign, the devil is in the detail.

Math is taught very rigorously in IB. Do 100 problems in class and another 100 problems for homework.

I think that is better than the wishy washy GCSE, but I don't know enough about A-level to comment (embarrassing as DS is doing Further Maths so I should know).