The role, as the IB frames it
A supervisor is a teacher at the school with knowledge of the subject, appointed to guide one student's essay. The Extended essay guide sets the responsibilities and the limits, and it is the authority; the guide has been revised for candidates whose first assessment is 2027, so a supervisor should check which edition applies to their student before advising on structure or criteria. The IB recommends a modest number of hours of supervision across the process, spent on guidance rather than on the essay itself.
The supervisor's duties are consistent across editions: help the student choose a viable topic and research question, discuss the approach and sources, conduct the three mandatory reflection sessions, read one complete draft and comment on it in general terms, hold the viva voce, confirm the essay is the student's own work, and complete the supervisor's report.
The three reflection sessions
The IB requires three formal reflection sessions, and the student records a short reflection after each on the Reflections on planning and progress form, within a small overall word limit. The form is submitted with the essay and is assessed, so the sessions are not administrative: they are where the student's thinking about their own research becomes visible.
- First session, early: the topic, the initial research question, the plan and the sources the student intends to use. The reflection should show a decision being made.
- Interim session, mid-way: progress, problems, changes to the question or method, what the student has learned about researching. The reflection should show thinking changing in response to difficulty.
- Final session, the viva voce: after the essay is submitted, a short interview about what was learned, the challenges, and the student's confidence that the work is their own. The reflection should show what the process meant.
How much help is allowed
Supervisors may discuss the topic, the question, the method, the sources and the structure, and may read and comment on one full draft. They may not edit the essay, correct its language, rewrite sections, or read and comment on successive drafts until it is right. The draft comments should be about the essay as a whole: where the argument is unclear, where evidence is thin, where the question has drifted. A supervisor who marks up sentences has crossed the line.
The line exists because of academic integrity. Moderators read the essay and the reflection form together, and an essay whose quality does not match the reflections, or whose voice changes between sections, raises questions the school will have to answer. The supervisor's signature confirms the essay is the student's own work; it should be a confirmation the supervisor can make honestly.
A supervisor's year
The shape below fits a May-session school in which the essay is completed early in the second year. Adjust it to the coordinator's calendar.
- Spring of year one — subject and topic agreed; first reflection session; a research plan with dates.
- Summer — research and reading; the student keeps a research log.
- Early autumn of year two — interim reflection session; the question and method settled; drafting begins.
- Late autumn — one full draft read and commented on in general terms.
- Winter — final essay submitted internally; viva voce and final reflection; supervisor's report and the coordinator's internal deadline met, ahead of the IB's upload date.
The criteria, and what they reward
The essay is assessed against five criteria whose exact wording and weighting depend on the edition of the guide that applies to the student. Across editions the weight sits on the quality of the research question and its framing, the use of knowledge and sources, and above all the analysis and the line of argument; presentation counts for little, and the student's reflection on the process is assessed through the form. A supervisor who knows the criteria can point a student at what will earn marks, which is analysis, and away from what will not, which is length and decoration.
Where supervision goes wrong
Coordinators see the same failures in the essays that score poorly or attract integrity questions.
- A research question so broad that no 4,000-word answer is possible, left unchallenged at the first session.
- Reflection sessions held in a corridor and written up in June.
- Multiple drafts read and corrected, producing a polished essay the student cannot explain at the viva voce.
- No research log, so sources and the student's own thinking cannot be traced.
- A supervisor unfamiliar with the current guide, advising a structure the criteria no longer reward.
- Deadlines set by the student rather than by the coordinator, so the essay competes with everything else in the second year.
