Case study: GEMS Modern Academy's IB bridge programme

GEMS Modern Academy is the first Indian curriculum school in the Middle East to offer the IB Diploma. Education Journal looks at how the school developed its bridging programme to help students transition from the ISC to IB curriculum.


RATIONALE & OBJECTIVE

In 2014, GEMS Modern Academy became the first Indian curriculum school to offer the IB Diploma programme, following requests from parents for an alternative international curriculum for their children more than eight years ago.

While the school's leadership team considered the requests, limited resources at its old campus restricted the team from offering an additional qualification. However, when the school moved to its new campus, the team began working on gaining approval from the International Baccalaureate Organisation to offer the IB Diploma Programme (IBP).

The school received approval from the IBO in 2012, and in April 2014 launched an IB Bridge Programme developed by the team to help students transition from an Indian curriculum to the IB.

Principal Nargish Khambatta explains: "There wasn't anything like a bridging programme offered by schools here. We knew what the issues and concerns were when children went from a non-IB background to an IB course or curriculum. It's a different curriculum altogether, so we constructed a bespoke bridging programme with different models, that was refined over three years.


CONCEPT & INVESTMENT

With the academic year for Indian curriculum schools beginning in April, the team realised there was an opportunity to prepare students switching to the IB curriculum between April and June, when schools in the UAE officially break for summer holidays. To this end, GEMS Modern Academy developed a 10-week module for students to help them learn the skills required for the IB Diploma programme.

Shawn Pernasilsi, IBDP coordinator at GEMS Modern Academy notes: "Say you're in an international school system and you jump from the Indian or British curriculum to IB — there's a difference in philosophy and approach and assessment, so we had a special opportunity with those three-months here and created the bridge programme."

Additionally, the school also invested heavily in training teachers to teach the IB curriculum. Pernasilsi explains: "You have to train all of the teachers in the beginning, before you start the programme, in order to get authorised. But even after that we put a lot of money into training a lot of teachers, and we continue to do it. We keep the class sizes very small, which comes at a cost. But the team has put a lot of priority on making sure there's a lot of attention for the students individually because when things like the coursework or the extended essay come up, huge tasks like that take a lot of time. It's been really helpful for the teachers and students to have that small atmosphere in the beginning rather than try and do it as economically as you possibly can."

Teachers are also shared across both curricula, with no one teacher dedicated solely to the IB Diploma.

"We don't have a single teacher that's only dedicated to the IB because we believe that it's an integral part of the whole school. Our senior teachers teach the IB programme; we have about 30 teachers for 21 subjects," Khambatta explains.

The school also had to convince parents the IB would be a good fit for those seeking an alternative curriculum.

Khambatta explains: "The parents who opted for the IB programme wanted it, but some were a little sceptical because we were an Indian school offering it. They wondered about everything, so it took quite some time to explain. We really expose them to how the programme is going to play out over the next two years, what is the school's role, what is the parents' role, what is the child's role — what's important for them to do, and more importantly, what's important for them not to do.

"With communication being key, Sean brought in the ManageBac system, which offers complete transparency — parents and teachers can see what's happening on a shared platform. And parents were so appreciative of everything we've done.


THE PROGRAMME IN PRACTICE

Students who choose to take the IB Diploma in Year 11 are expected to notify the school of their decision by January when in Year 10. Students then undergo a number of assessments to determine whether they are eligible for the IB programme.

Pernasilsi explains: "What we do is we look at their prelim scores, we do some standardised testing called ALIS – it's an external test provided by a company in the UK and what they do is they measure the student's aptitude. They have a database of previous candidates who have taken this test that completed the IB. So the database shows you the median results for people who've got a comparable aptitude. So we take the prelims, we take that result and eventually the final result. What we are in the process of doing is establishing prerequisites or standards, so if a student wants to study a subject at a higher level, they need a certain score on their prelim or final so that we can proactively keep people out of risky subjects or from picking a selection of subjects that might not be suitable.

"Our intention is to give them offer letters where we say "you've picked these subjects, but here's what we can offer you", much before the start of the programme in April. It's a fairly standard practice — we are not trying to be academically selective; it's the opposite — we are trying to be inclusive. We are just trying to make sure that everyone that comes through the diploma chooses a stream and subjects where they can have positive results and can be successful, rather than picking subjects where we know historically there's a big risk and then six months into the programme we see problems and they have to make changes."

Students are also encourage to not take on too many subjects, something they struggled with when transitioning from the highly competitive Indian curriculum.

Khambatta explains: "Within the Indian curriculum we are always told to take the sciences — physics, chemistry and biology. But with the IB they dissuade you from taking three subjects, that too at higher levels. So we've had some students very optimistically selecting maths, physics, and chemistry at high level, and that's quite impossible to do. This batch has been a very bright batch, but we've still had to steer a few students.

"I think we have a nice triangulation between advice from the careers department, the students' ambitions and where they want to go, and fitting in exactly what we should be offering. The conversation we have with students and parents and teachers is very important. That's our strength — we know our children, we know where they're going, we interact very closely with parents and they buy into what we tell them.

Over the course of the bridge programme that runs from April to June, students take a range of modules, which include topics such as critical thinking and analysis and interpretation of data, research methods, the scientific method, time management skills, introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, and plagiarism. Pernasilsi adds: "Children also have another module called the Big Right, which is focused on helping them develop skills to help them do the extended essay. In the IB that's a 40-hour 4,000 word research project like a mini thesis, and frankly, kids don't do that in any curriculum before IB — so they are taught research skills, the ability to differentiate between sources and find what's a good research source, how to do citations. Investigative science is another one — the IB science curriculum is very focused on inquiry and students ask their own questions. The coursework in the IB science courses is an investigation, or what they call and exploration. So students are asking their own questions and researching it in the lab for 10 hours, which is quite different from the coursework in the Indian or British curriculum."


RESULTS

In its first year, GEMS Modern Academy's IB Diploma cohort comprised 42 students in 2016.

With a 89.7% pass rate the school is more than 10 percentage points above the international averages. The school also achieved an average score rate of 33.6 which surpassed the international average of 30.

Commenting on the results, Khambatta says: "I am pleased with the outcome – we are the only Indian school to offer the IBDP in UAE. This was our first batch and since we do not select only the best students, but encourage all students to apply in keeping with the IB philosophy, the batch has done very well indeed. I would like to thank our parents for having faith in us and entrusting us with their children — it was a leap of faith and we are all happy with the outcome — the university placements speak for themselves.

The IB bridge programme has also received interest from students of other schools.

"We've had about 80 candidates come through and apply for IB for this September and we've taken on just over 50," Pernasilsi reveals.