Start with current IB guidance
The expectations for a visit depend on the programme and on the IB's current processes, which it revises. The IB's own programme evaluation documentation is the authority, and a generic checklist, including any in this article, is a poor substitute for reading it.
What follows is a way of thinking about a visit, not a specification of one.
Implementation, not paperwork
A visiting team is trying to establish whether the programme is really carried out. Policies matter, but as a starting point: the question behind each is whether the classroom, the planning and the conversations in the school match what the policy says.
A school with strong documents and a different reality is easy to spot. So is one whose reality is better than its documents, which usually means its evidence is poorly organised rather than its practice being weak.
Consistency across sources
Teams are generally able to see the school from several angles: documents, the classrooms, and conversations with teachers, students, leaders and families. The strongest schools are those where these agree without anyone having coordinated them.
That is the real argument for evidence that comes from everyday work. A unit planner written for teaching and a set of moderated student work are consistent because they were not made for the visit.
What the standards and practices ask about
The programme standards and practices are grouped under headings including purpose, environment, culture and learning, covering the school's philosophy, governance and resources, the culture of the school community, and teaching and learning itself. The four categories are set out in IB programme evaluation and self-study.
Where skodle fits
This section names our own product, so weigh it accordingly. What an evaluator looks for does not depend on software.
What skodle can do is make everyday work findable. Units, assessments, portfolio entries, projects and reflections can be linked to a practice, each practice carries a status and owned, dated actions, and a gap view shows practices with no evidence. A read-only, expiring link for a visiting team exists, and a printable summary can be exported. See accreditation management.
The important limitation, stated plainly: skodle can help organise and surface evidence, but it cannot predict or replace an evaluator's professional judgement, and it does not tell a school it will pass. Linking and status are set by people, the starter set of practices is not the IB's own numbered text, and the visiting-team link is not yet something a coordinator creates with a button.
How to prepare in practice
Read the current guidance and self-assess honestly, keep an evidence register that is current, and check the fit between what you say and what happens by having colleagues observe each other. Prepare staff, students and families to talk about the programme in their own words rather than to a script.
A self-check you can run this term
The most reliable rehearsal for a visit is a small, honest version of it. Run this once a term, on a different practice each time.
- Pick one practice and give yourself five minutes to find three pieces of evidence for it
- Ask two teachers, separately, how the school does the same thing, and compare their answers
- Read the relevant policy beside a real lesson plan and a piece of student work, and note any mismatch
- Ask a student what they are learning and why, and check it against the unit planner
- Record what you found and who owns each fix
Common weaknesses
Documents that no one has read since they were written. Evidence with no date or context. Policies that are inconsistent with each other. A programme coordinator who is the only person who can explain anything. And a school that prepares only for the visit and lets practice slip between them.
What software cannot do
No system can tell a school whether it will satisfy a team, because that judgement belongs to the IB's visiting educators looking at the whole school. Be wary of any product that implies otherwise. For how to hold your evidence, see how to organise IB accreditation evidence.
