The shape of the process
A school moves through consideration, then candidate status, then authorisation, with a verification visit before authorisation is granted. Programme evaluation follows on a cycle once a school is authorised, so this is not a one-off exercise — it is a rhythm the school joins.
Evidence is judged against the IB's programme standards and practices, which are organised around purpose, environment, culture and learning. The categories matter less than the underlying question, which is the same throughout: is this how the school actually works, or is this a document written for us?
Why late collection fails
Evidence gathered in a rush has a signature. Meeting minutes all dated within the same fortnight. Unit plans with reflection sections filled in identically. Professional development logged retrospectively. None of it is dishonest, and all of it is obvious.
The alternative is not more work. It is the same work, captured when it happens. A departmental meeting that produces a decision produces its own evidence at the time; recreating it six months later costs more and convinces less.
What to capture as it happens
The list below is not exhaustive, and your programme's documentation is the authority on what is required. It is a list of the things schools most often find themselves reconstructing.
- Unit plans with genuine before, during and after reflection — written in the term the unit ran.
- Evidence of collaborative planning: who met, when, what changed as a result.
- Professional development records, including who attended what and how it affected practice.
- Policies with a visible review history — language, assessment, inclusion, academic integrity — showing they are used rather than filed.
- Assessment evidence showing standardisation between teachers of the same subject.
- Student work spanning the range of attainment, not only the strongest examples.
- Governance and leadership records showing the programme is resourced and understood above the coordinator's level.
The coordinator's real problem
A coordinator rarely lacks evidence. They lack a way to find it. It exists across shared drives, email threads, three versions of a policy and a folder somebody made in 2024, and the work of a visit is the retrieval rather than the practice.
Whatever system you use, the test is whether you can answer "show me evidence of collaborative planning in the MYP this year" in a minute. If the answer takes an afternoon, the system is a filing cabinet.
Self-study is where the school learns something
Before a visit, a school assesses itself against the standards and practices. Treated as paperwork, it produces a document that says everything is fine and teaches nobody anything. Treated seriously, it is the most useful internal review a school will run all cycle.
The difference is whether the self-study names things that are not working yet. A visiting team is not looking for a school with no gaps — they are looking for a school that knows where its gaps are and has a plan. A self-study with no weaknesses in it reads as either incurious or evasive, and both invite closer attention.
Spread the work past the coordinator
Authorisation collapses onto one person in most schools, and that person is usually already teaching. It is worth deciding early which parts genuinely require the coordinator and which only require someone.
Department heads can own standardisation evidence. A senior leader can own governance and resourcing. Teachers own their own unit reflections, and will write them if the ask is ten sentences in the last week of a unit rather than forty planners in April.
Treat evaluation as the same job
Schools that experience evaluation as a crisis are usually the ones that treated authorisation as a project with an end date. The evidence habits that get you authorised are the ones that make evaluation ordinary.
The useful reframe is that none of this is for the IB. A school that can show how it plans, standardises and reviews is a school that knows those things about itself.
