MYP Curriculum

The Middle Years Programme (MYP) provides a framework of academic challenge and life skills for students aged 11-16 years. The five-year programme offers an educational approach that embraces yet transcends traditional school subjects. It follows naturally the Primary Years Programme and serves as excellent preparation for the Diploma Years Programme.

The MYP, like the other two programmes of the International Baccalaureate Organisation, is based on the premise that education can foster understanding among young people around the world. Intercultural awareness is central to the programme, to enable future generations to live more peacefully and productively than we do today.

Students at this stage - early puberty to mid-adolescence - are in a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development. This is a time of uncertainty, sensitivity, resistance and questioning. An educational programme needs to provide them with discipline, skills and challenging standards, but also with creativity and flexibility. The IBO builds its programme around these considerations but it is also concerned that students develop a personal value system by which to guide their own lives, as thoughtful members of local communities and the larger world.

The MYP programme provides a thorough study of various disciplines. It also accentuates the interrelatedness of them, acknowledging the role of the subject disciplines and transdisciplinary study. At the same time, the IBO recognises the importance of respecting the independence and integrity of each discipline.

The Curriculum Model
This diagram represents the curriculum model of the MYP. The distinct subject groups are shown around the outside.

The areas of interaction (the inter circles) are common to all disciplines with each subject developing general and specific aspects of the areas.

In this way, the subject groups are also linked by the areas of interaction, demonstrating the interdisciplinary potential of the MYP. Students are required to experience and explore each of the five areas of interaction in every year of the programme.

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