Middle Years: Age 11-16
The International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (MYP) provides a framework of academic challenge and life skills for students aged 11-16 years. The five-year programme offers an educational approach that embraces yet transcends traditional school subjects. It follows naturally from the Primary Years Programme and serves as excellent preparation for the Diploma Years Programme.
The MYP, like the other two programmes of the International Baccalaureate Organisation, is based on the premise that education can foster understanding among young people around the world. Intercultural awareness is central to the programme to enable future generations to live more peacefully and productively than we do today.
Students at this stage - early puberty to mid-adolescence - are in a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development. This is a time of uncertainty, sensitivity, resistance and questioning. An educational programme needs to provide them with discipline, skills and challenging standards, but also with creativity and flexibility. The IB builds its programme around these considerations but is also concerned that students develop a personal value system by which to guide their own lives, as thoughtful members of local communities and the larger world.
The MYP Curriculum
The MYP provides a thorough study of various disciplines. It also accentuates the interrelatedness of these disciplines, acknowledging the role of the subject disciplines and transdisciplinary study.
At the same time, the IB recognises the importance of respecting the independence and integrity of each discipline.
Areas of interaction
Five perspectives known as the Areas of Interaction are at the core of the MYP. These are approaches to learning, community service, health and social education, environment, and homo faber. These perspectives pervade and recur throughout the five years of the MYP, through the eight subject groups, and also through interdisciplinary teaching and projects, whole school activities and the MYP personal project.
The areas of interaction are not directly assessed nor awarded individual grades since they are themes rather than subjects. They are, however, indirectly assessed through the personal project.
Personal project
This is an independent piece of work that is intended to be the culmination of the student's involvement with the five areas of interaction. It may be an essay, an artistic production or other form of expression, with the topic chosen in consultation with teachers.
Academic disciplines: the subject groups
The emphasis is on a conceptual framework with objectives that are oriented towards skills and the learning process. The areas of interaction are addressed within these disciplines.
If you require more information about the Middle School Programme, please do not hesitate to contact Narendra Mehrotra - MYP Coordinator.
