A Levels or IB?

[Missmissmissmiss]

DD is in Y10 and went to her first college open evening last week and was interested to find out about loads of humanities subjects as well as business, photography (she's taken it for GCSE) and biology. The biology lecturer asked about her possible course choices and predicted GCSE grades then suggested the IB might suit her as she's strong all-round student.

The head of IB made the course sound very exciting, especially the 'extras' but DD isn't keen on starting a language from scratch and isn't confident she'd cope with the maths.

Has anyone got experience of the IB? Do universities like it? And what about future employers? DD doesn't know what she'd like to do for a career yet either!

Drat, lost post twice!

Tl;dr - You're both absolutely right. Being multilingual is a definite perk in any educational system.

I teach both A level and IB.IB is a significantly higher workload and imo it’s best chosen by students who love all their subjects and don’t want to drop anything. In my subject, English, they have to read a lot more independently and texts are taught in a much more light touch way, in the one and a bit terms in which my A level class studied two texts, the IB students studied 6. I’d say that the exams are a little easier but overall it’s a lot more work. It’s a great course but doesn’t suit everyone.

Speaking as the mother of a multilingual child, Corvus and Tizerus, I would have to disagree that multilingualism is a "definite perk" in any educational system. My DD speaks both English and German fluently but, like most multilingual kids, has weaknesses in some areas of both. We live in Germany and here there is little to no tolerance of the fact that she can't write German quite so well as a monolingual child and that she occasionally misinterprets or doesn't have the perfect word at her finger tips. And that lack of tolerance extends across all subjects - it doesn't just affect German as a subject. And when it comes to English, she can speak it better than the teacher but gets marked down for using grammar and vocabulary that they haven't yet learned in class (simple example: using the words " teepee" and "wigwam" instead of "tent") or that the teacher is simply not familiar with. So the situation is really not quite so clear cut as you might suppose.

And as far as the IB goes, it's perfectly possible to just speak just one native language and to do well in IB Language B. I did French SL having only done O-level French previously yet managed a 7. (But the boy in my class from Jersey who spoke it fluently and had French mother didn't however so, again, the multilingual child did not have an advantage.)

DD1 did the IB. She said it made the first year of uni a doddle. She did struggle with the amount of work and the discipline of the IB - she had very little free time in sixth form. She got 35 points and got onto a course at a Russell Group university that demanded AAA for A levels. Some of her offers were, frankly, bizarre, and it was the lower ranked universities that gave her offers from 39–42. I think they don’t entirely understand the IB.

DD1 is bilingual. It didn’t particularly help her in the exam, as her written French isn’t native speaker standard. She got a 6 in the higher level and was hoping for a 7.

got a 4 on a latin GCSE that she had 4 months and very limited contact time of teaching for. was also predicted an 8 in french before dropping it in year 10 for options. got a 7 in maths too - not unable to cope, just had different interests. hope this helps!

I think for IB they need to be true all rounders. Not having a MFL at gcse is not helpful. It’s not the hallmark of an all rounder. IB definitely suits DC who are very good at all core subjects. Essentially it’s what the govt was aiming for with Ebacc but we rubbish that.