What programme evaluation is
After authorisation, each IB programme a school offers is evaluated on a cycle the IB sets, currently every five years. The purpose is not to re-authorise the school; it is to check that the programme is being implemented as the IB's standards describe and to support the school's own development. The evaluation is built around the Programme standards and practices, and the current edition, published in 2020, organises them into four categories: purpose, environment, culture and learning.
The school completes a self-study, reflecting on its practice against every standard, and gathers evidence to support what it says. The IB reviews the self-study and evidence, in some cases with a visit, and issues a report. The exact components, timings and the form the report takes are set by the IB's guide to programme evaluation for each programme; that guide is the authority, and it is revised, so read the current one rather than rely on what happened last cycle.
The four categories, in plain terms
The standards read as abstractions until they are mapped to what a school actually does. Roughly:
- Purpose — the school's mission is in step with the IB's, and the community knows what the programme is for.
- Environment — leadership and governance support the programme; students are supported (including access and inclusion); teachers are supported with time, resources and professional development.
- Culture — the school has, and implements, the policies the IB requires: language, assessment, inclusion and academic integrity among them. A policy that exists but is not implemented is a finding waiting to happen.
- Learning — the curriculum is coherent and collaboratively planned; students become lifelong learners through the learner profile and approaches to learning; teaching is inquiry-based, concept-driven and differentiated; assessment is criterion-related and standardised.
Start the year before, not the term before
The single decision that determines whether the self-study is useful is when it starts. The IB gives notice well ahead of the evaluation window. Use that notice to begin a twelve-month cycle in which the evidence is gathered as it is produced, rather than assembled afterwards from memory.
In practice that means one person, usually the programme coordinator, owning a calendar of what will be collected when: the collaborative planning records from each planning cycle, the standardisation records from each term, the professional development log, the policy reviews, the samples of student work with feedback. If each of those is filed the week it happens, the final term is spent writing reflection rather than hunting for documents.
It also means the self-study is written by the community, not the coordinator. Each standard should have a small group, including teachers and where sensible students and parents, who reflect on it honestly. The IB reads for honesty; a self-study that rates every practice as fully in place is less credible than one that names what is still developing and shows the plan.
The evidence that carries weight
Evidence in programme evaluation means records of practice, at the level of the school's own work. A mission statement proves purpose is written down; a survey showing that parents can describe the programme proves it is understood. The second kind is what the evaluation is looking for.
- Unit planners and the programme of inquiry or subject overviews, showing collaborative planning and the vertical and horizontal articulation the standards describe.
- Collaborative planning records: who met, when, what was decided, what changed in the planners as a result.
- Standardisation records and anchor samples, showing that teachers mark consistently and that the school checks.
- The required policies, with the date of the last review and evidence of implementation: a language policy is implemented when placement, support and reporting follow it.
- Professional development records mapped to IB requirements for each programme, including who has attended which category of workshop.
- Student work with teacher feedback, across the range of achievement, and the reflection students produce about it.
- Records of how student support, inclusion and academic integrity operate in practice: referrals, adjustments, cases handled.
- Governance minutes showing the board's engagement with the programme, and the budget lines that support it.
Programme development: choose something you mean
The current process asks the school to identify a focus for programme development over the cycle and to show what it did and what changed. Schools sometimes pick the focus that sounds most impressive. The better choice is the one the self-study honestly shows is weakest, because that is where a plan with evidence of change reads as genuine development rather than decoration.
A good development focus is specific enough to measure. Not "improve assessment" but "standardise criterion C in every subject group each term and reduce cross-band disagreement to under ten per cent of samples". Twelve months of records against a target like that are the strongest thing a self-study can contain.
The coordinator's year, month by month
The shape below assumes twelve months from the IB's notice to the submission. Compress or stretch it to the dates in your own notice.
- Months 1–2 — read the current guide and standards; brief leadership and the board; set up the evidence calendar and the working groups per category; choose the development focus.
- Months 3–8 — collect evidence as it is produced; run and record standardisation each term; review each required policy with its group and file the review; hold the first honest self-rating per standard.
- Months 9–10 — draft the self-study from the groups' reflections; identify gaps in evidence and fill the ones that can be filled honestly; do not manufacture the ones that cannot.
- Month 11 — read the whole self-study as an outsider would; check that every claim points at a document; brief the community on what was said about them.
- Month 12 — submit; prepare for a visit if one is scheduled; plan the next cycle's calendar while the process is fresh.
What the report does with it
The IB's report responds to the self-study and evidence standard by standard, and where a requirement is not being met the school is expected to address it within a timeframe the IB sets. The precise categories of finding and the follow-up expected are defined in the current guide; do not assume they match a previous cycle's report.
Read the report as the beginning of the next cycle rather than the end of this one. The recommendations, the school's own honest self-ratings and the development focus together are the plan for the next five years, and the evidence calendar that made this self-study bearable is the tool that makes the next one easy.
