An International Baccalaureate board is a non-profit educational foundation with headquarters based in Geneva. It lays emphasis on education being based on intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills. The approach of IB is to prepare students for life. IB has a streamlined authorization process that has to be completed by a candidate school to become an IB school. If the school is able to complete this intensive, globally consistent process, then it enables the school to deliver an outstanding IB education. There is a sequence to steps one has to go through to start an IB school.
There is a variation in the authorization process as the process depends on the type of school and the type of program the school is offering. Two to three years are usually required to complete this process.
Following are the phases to start a new IB school in India:
Consideration Phase : the first and basic requirement to open an IB school is to submit school information form to IB. On its acceptance, one is supposed to attend a workshop to identify the requirement of resources and to understand the details of the functions of various elements of the IB system. Most importantly one has to submit the required documents for this process and appoint a person to coordinate the program.
Request for candidacy : all the supporting documents and information have to be submitted at the time of candidacy form submission. A particular amount of fees has to be submitted with it. After its submission, review of application is done by IB and it provides feedback with certain compliances if required.
Candidate phase : next step is to have access to the curriculum centre on receiving the status as a candidate school. IB provides help and support to the staff members in understanding the policies and in acquiring the necessary training. Trial implementation of the syllabus can be started in a few cases. In this phase consultants provide feedback after their visit. On the basis of his report, the school can update the requirements to become an IB school.
Request for authorization : this is the last phase in which the candidate school is required to submit explanatory authorization form to IB. After the verification is done during the visit by IB experts, they will provide a final feedback. The report will be presented by the regional office. If the result of the report is positive and there are no issues then the candidate school will be granted permission for IB program to be executed.
It is a well laid out process and one may have to face their own set of challenges to open an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. One has to understand the complexity and the level of perfection that is required in each stage and complete it without any glitches.
Then the candidate school will be granted permission for IB program to be executed.
