IB Courses at AISG: Do We Need More?

At the beginning of 2018-2019 school year, AISG added the highly anticipated International Baccalaureate (IB) Computer Science SL/HL course to our program. I thought of this addition as a great sign that AISG cares about the demand of the students and that AISG is willing to enrich our college preparatory education quality. Yet, I still wondered why some IB courses–that are already offered in a lot of other international schools AND have high demand–are still not offered at AISG. After talking to multiple AISG high school students, I concluded that AISG students’ most wanted IB courses are IB Business & Management and IB English B. 

IB Business & Management is an IB course that I also predicted to be highly demanded by AISG students. After all, many AISG students who wish to further study a course from “Group 3 Individuals and Societies” in their university wish to major in the school of business, specifically in courses such as economics, business & management, finance, accounting, and international business. Many students claim that if IB Business & Management was offered at our school, they would have gladly taken both IB Economics and IB Business & Management, instead of IB Economics and another Group 3 course that they are not really interested in.

Five months ago, when I was writing my “Why Choose IB” article, I had asked our IB coordinator, Ms. Anne Martin Bauer, why AISG does not offer IB Business & Management despite the high demand from the students. To answer my question, she first gave a brief history of the educational system at AISG. She said that AISG used to only offer Advanced Placement (AP) but very recently, AISG decided to shift from AP to IB. This means that AISG is a relatively new IB school, so it is natural that AISG does not have as many IB courses as Utahloy International School Guangzhou (UISG) which began offering the IB program much earlier than AISG. With the given school size, number of students, and the rather brief history with IB, AISG — at least for now — simply cannot offer both IB Economics and IB Business & Management. And if AISG had to decide only one between the two, Ms. AMB said IB Economics would be chosen because colleges over the world view economics as a more rigorous, traditional course than business & management.

Then how about IB English B? Our school currently offers a variety of “Group 2 Language Acquisition” courses, including IB Mandarin B, IB Spanish B, and IB French B. But why not English? Many AISG students who have English as their secondary or tertiary language wish that they could take English B and take their actual mother tongue language in “Group 1 Studies in Language and Literature”. Many weak English students believe that if they took IB English B, they would be able to get a much higher IB score and have significantly less stress from IB since they could perhaps get a 6 or 7 in English B whereas in IB English Literature or Language & Literature, they could get a 3, 4, or 5. I also thought that if AISG offers IB English B, numerous students could benefit from the addition of the course since AISG students are mostly non-native English speakers.

Yet Ms. Barga, the head of English department, had an answer to why AISG does not offer IB English B. She explained that AISG is supposed to be a school that “predominantly consists of English-proficient students” instead of “English as secondary language students”. She also mentioned AISG’s ESL program which is “designed to prepare all AISG students” to be able to pass the minimum requirement of an IB English A SL course before they enter the IB program. Indeed, AISG has never had any IB English Literature or Language & Literature SL student who had failed to achieve the minimum score needed to “pass” the course.

Finally, she described the question of whether AISG should add IB English B or not as a “philosophical dilemma” because students may wish to take the “easy path”. Students who are perfectly capable of taking IB English A SL may choose to take IB English B just to get easier grades. When Ms. Barga gave this reason, I could at last realize why AISG purposely decided not to offer IB English B. I thought, if AISG actually offered IB English B and more courses in Group 1 before I entered the IB program, I might have taken English B HL and Korean A SL and went on the “easy path” previously described by Ms. Barga–although I am a student who is certainly capable of studying English in A level. By “forcing” all AISG students to take IB English A, we are able to acquire English speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills in a very good, professional learning environment.

As a current AISG student who is on my way to completing half of my IB journey, I hope that AISG adds more IB courses so that future AISG high school students have an opportunity to take courses that they are truly interested in. However, you should remember that taking the easy path and merely achieving high numbers on the IB final exam is not the best way to demonstrate your academic strength to universities. Try to push yourself and choose your IB courses, not based on whether you can get an easy 6 or 7 but whether you can actually learn something from the course and hopefully apply the knowledge you acquired in the future.