The international Primary Curriculum is one of the most sought after curricula in Singapore for primary school students (ages 5 to 11). This is borne out by the fact that leading international schools like Harrods International Academy offer it to their students. Let us see what it is about IPC schools that makes them so special in this article.
Nearly 1300 hundred schools in more than 63 countries offer the International Primary Curriculum to the students in that age group. This testifies to the curriculum’s global popularity, especially amongst international schools.There are several reasons that explain this popularity Let us look at what these might be in the IPC guide below:
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Better Engagement
When it comes to children that young, you cannot expect them to learn, unless they really want to. What IPC does to get around that is to put in place more than 80 diverse units of learning which are characterised by their child friendliness. Besides, these incorporate topics that are modern and excite the engagement of the children. Teachers are encouraged to use themes like airports, inventions and machines and I’m alive to draw the students in and get them excited by what they are studying.
What this does is to motivate the young children to take an interest in academically important subjects like history, geography and science. They are able to do this by being able to forge links with the world around them via their learning.
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Academic Rigour
The IPC curriculum helps maintain academic rigour in primary schools around the world. It does so by ensuring that core subjects like history, geography, science, art, information technology, physical education and so on help make the students literate in the true sense of the term. For instance, a theme might incorporate a subject only if there is a connection between what one is asked to learn and the core idea behind the theme in question.
This means that each subject is associated with a number of learning tasks that empowers teachers to help their children conform to a set of learning goals prescribed in the curriculum. There is, for instance, a chocolate unit which can be linked with subjects like history (the discovery of chocolate), geography (countries that grow cacao) and art (packaging of chocolate) and science (energy value in foodstuffs like chocolate). The curriculum helps the teachers ensure that a child’s ability to gain knowledge, acquire skills and gather an understanding of something are understood as distinct entities and dealt with separately. This requires context, necessitating real life, practical learning experiences for the primary school students.
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Helping Develop Personalities
Every individual has certain predilections that one develops over time. These cannot develop merely by reading a book. That is the reason why the International Primary Curriculum does not pile on lessons about things like morality, but the stress is in helping them experience and practise personal dispositions that are part of the learning process. Quite a few of these tasks are in the shape of group activities which let the children interact with each others’ ideas, working in a collaborative manner allowing them to take into consideration other people’s views and in the process learning to communicate effectively.
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Empowering Teachers
The IPC units conform to a very structured teaching methodology which is also very flexible, its structure comprising a series of learning tasks. These help a student learn with the help of creative and meaningful learning activities that take into account the personal predilections of children of varying abilities.These learning tasks are designed in a manner that children are able to build on what they learnt on an individual basis from their previous IPC units.
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Empowering Schools
IPC is more than a curriculum. It has become a vibrant global community of more than 1300 schools across 63 countries spanning the globe. This enables the sharing of best practices via blogs, podcasts, summer schools, conferences and so on in every far off corner of the world, where there is an IPC school.
Conclusion
The International Primary Curriculum is amongst the leading international curricula catering to the needs of students in the 5 to11 years age group.This curricula stands out from the others because it is modern and holistic in its conception helping ensure that it helps every individual, learn, grow and develop in accordance with their abilities.
It is not surprising that this is the curriculum of choice for over 1300 schools in over 63 countries in every corner of the world. There are several reasons for the popularity of this curriculum. These range from better engagement and greater academic rigour to helping develop personalities and empowering both schools and their students, this is a curriculum par excellence.
Going forward one can expect the International Primary Curriculum to continue to be one of the most sought after international curricula for students in that age group.
