As of March 31st 2020, the collapse and bankruptcy of the International Diploma program were finalized. 

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While this may come as a complete shock to many, especially to the seniors, the IB office offered some reassuring words, “To our students, teachers, and administrators around the world, we want to offer our utter apologies to the circumstances of these events. More information will be forthcoming.” 

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The IB bankruptcy comes on the heels of many rumors swirling around the dark places of Reddit and CNN and Fox. For example, one CNN report (shorturl.at/csCUV) cited the imminent bankruptcy of the IB in late February that was caused by, “terrifyingly bad extended essays which caused IB examiners to have severe migraines” (CNN).

One Redditor, who claimed to be one of the aforementioned examiners, asserted, “The essays have gotten so bad that it is completely clear students have started to do it last minute and have barely gotten anything done.”

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This all of course comes after the big COVID-19 scare that has caused many schools to pull their IB support on the heels of cancelation of May exams

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With IB students clearly causing a bountiful amount of headaches for the examiners, why did not the IB change to a more quantitative test? Perhaps an all multiple-choice test? Well, a problem with this solution can be inferred from one of the past subject reports.

 

The subject report for IB History of 2019 cited very clearly that there were oddities with most of the students’ responses to the questions. Most notably they said, “it is clear that the candidates have been negatively influenced by one or more aspects of the course(s) which has pushed numerous candidates to write nonsensical answers for even the most frequently achieved questions.”

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An internal IB document has cited “numerous problems” with the program involving “overworking” and “asking too much of students” to the point of “making students behave in a nonsensical and irrational way.” However, this document goes on to not recommend any severe changes due to the “ability of schools to set deadlines for their students to follow” and if the students can follow the realistic deadlines set by the school  “the International Baccalaureate will no longer be at fault for overworking the students” (IB internal document 01.2019)

 

The response from the school has been vague so far after receiving the news. The only official word that has been sent out is that “the seniors are taking the exams in May, whether they like it or not.”

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Clearly no one knows what to do about the IB shutting down, and Awty is in the midst of one of the biggest identity crises it has ever been in since the loss of its football team in 1984. 

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There is hope, however, the maker of the AP system, the IB’s biggest competitor, announced earlier this week that “the world will just have to accept the AP once and for all.”