Draft copy. Not for publication.
Curriculum
Two layers. Two jobs. The IB teaches a child to think. Seven programmes make them use it, every year, age two to Grade 12.
How it is built
Layer one · the academics
How to think. Not what to think.
A problem does not arrive labelled by department. So the Diploma asks for six subjects at once, a four-thousand-word research essay at seventeen, and a course in how you know what you know.
None of it can be memorised. That is deliberate.
And deliberately separable. A curriculum organises knowledge; it is not an identity. The one thing it may never do is bend.
Layer two · the core
By eighteen, a body of work. Not a transcript.
Seven programmes. Every year. Alongside every academic subject.
The academics teach what is known. SANDBOX is where it gets used. It is the part that does not change, and the reason our graduates are recognisable on sight.
The core that does not change
The capable adult
Life Skills. Money, communication, cooking, first aid, contracts, judgement.
Life Tools. Digital fluency, AI literacy, coding, data, making. On a badge ladder.
Life Experience. Expeditions, immersions, field service, work.
Mastery, not exposure
One art. One sport. A ladder from Foundation to Master. Silver is the floor for graduation.
Public performance every year. Competition every year. A separate tier for those going further.
The foundation of health
Wellbeing. A taught health curriculum. The pastoral net. Workload rules that are enforced. Clinical counselling.
Nutrition. The kitchen as a teaching instrument, not a canteen.
Science and technology
Real laboratory science, every year. Engineering. The workshop. Computation.
A mentored research pathway with ethics review. An annual Innovation Exhibition. And students own what students invent.
Creating value
Market days. Then micro-businesses. Then incubated ventures.
Passion and Impact Projects, under one rule. Finished means public.
Real work
Jobs inside the school. Then partner companies. Then external internships.
Learning agreements. Labour-law compliance. And fair-access audits, so the best placements do not go to the best-connected families.
The multiplier
Character, evidenced rather than graded. Mental models: the thinking lattice. Voice: rhetoric, writing, media, audience. Service and citizenship.
And rites of passage, to mark when something has changed.
S equips. A disciplines. N sustains. D deepens. B creates. O employs. X multiplies.
The academic layer
Ages 3–11 · Kindergarten to Grade 5
Candidate school*
Inquiry-led. The question comes before the method. Knowledge arrives attached to something they wanted to know.
Ages 11–16 · Grades 6–10
Candidate school*
Subjects become distinct but stay connected. The personal project is the first time a student carries something alone from idea to audience.
Ages 16–18 · Grades 11–12
Authorised
Six subjects, an extended essay, theory of knowledge. Externally examined and internationally moderated: the thing no school can quietly lower.
Human International School is a candidate school* for the Primary Years Programme and the Middle Years Programme. This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy—a commitment to high quality, challenging, international education that Human International School believes is important for our students.
*Only schools authorized by the IB Organization can offer any of its four academic programmes: the Primary Years Programme (PYP), the Middle Years Programme (MYP), the Diploma Programme (DP), or the Career-related Programme (CP). Candidate status gives no guarantee that authorization will be granted. For further information about the IB and its programmes, visit www.ibo.org.
Before you choose a school
Two serious curricula. Both rigorous. Built to do different jobs.
Most schools answer this by explaining why theirs is best. Here is the more useful answer.
The other serious option
Built to certify depth. Three or four subjects, defined precisely, examined precisely. Progress is legible at every stage and success is unambiguous.
It produces genuine specialists, and it is very good at producing them. A child can go a long way inside one discipline and be measured accurately the whole way.
Choose it if your child is a specialist. Happiest going deep. Works to a clear target. Wants to be told exactly what is being asked.
What we teach
Built to force transfer. Six subjects across disciplines. A theory of knowledge course that asks how you know what you claim to know. An independent research essay. A requirement to act, not only to study.
You cannot pass the Diploma by being brilliant at one thing. That is not a side effect of the design. It is the design.
Choose it if your child asks why. Gets restless inside one subject. Works best when a task is open enough to make their own.
A Cambridge teacher must know their subject and the syllabus.
An IB teacher must know their subject. Be literate in the ones beside it. And say where it gets used outside the room. Because a student will ask, and the curriculum gives them the standing to.
That is a rare person. Expert in one discipline. Fluent across its neighbours. And has built something, not only read about it.
Which is why good IB teaching is scarce. And why we recruit from industry as readily as from education.
So, the honest answer. Depth is not the lesser virtue. Specialists change fields.
But the person who stands between two disciplines and sees what neither sees alone is made, not born. The Diploma is one of the few school curricula that requires it.
If your child is the specialist opposite, a good Cambridge school will serve them better than we will. Better you hear it now than in three years.
Where it is aimed
The Human Career Program points all seven at one question.
What will an admissions officer make of this child? What will an employer? And what has to be true by Grade 12 for the answer to be a good one.
It runs alongside the Diploma. Not instead of it.
[One approved paragraph about the Human Career Program, written and signed off by the school.]
Sit in a Middle Years lesson. Then a Diploma lesson. Then walk through the workshop at four o’clock. How the questions get asked is the whole argument.