Frameworks, not a single syllabus
People often ask what the IB curriculum is as if it were a list of topics. It is better understood as four frameworks: each defines the structure, the assessment approach and the requirements, and each school writes its curriculum within it. The exception is the Diploma, where the subject guides set much of the content directly.
The IB publishes and revises each programme's requirements, so use its current documentation as the authority before quoting a specific requirement.
The Primary Years Programme
The PYP, for students of roughly 3 to 12, is organised around six transdisciplinary themes rather than a subject timetable, with units of inquiry drawing on the subject areas: language, mathematics, science, social studies, the arts and personal, social and physical education. The whole-school structure is the programme of inquiry, and students complete an exhibition in their final year.
The Middle Years Programme
The MYP, for roughly 11 to 16, works through eight subject groups: language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, arts, physical and health education, and design. Teaching is tied together by key and related concepts and global contexts, and assessment is against published criteria in each subject, with a personal project at the end.
The Diploma Programme
The DP, for roughly 16 to 19, has students study six subjects, drawn from groups covering languages, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics and the arts, alongside a core of theory of knowledge, the extended essay and CAS. Subjects are taken at higher or standard level. The subject guides set the content and assessment.
The Career-related Programme
The CP is for students of about 16 to 19 who want a career-related pathway. It combines at least two Diploma Programme courses with a CP core and a career-related study. The core includes personal and professional skills, service learning, language development and a reflective project.
Where skodle fits
This section names our own product, so weigh it accordingly. What the IB curriculum contains does not depend on software.
For the planning of it, skodle provides curriculum maps by grade and subject, unit and lesson planning, and a gap report, with programme-specific structures: a PYP unit carries its central idea and lines of inquiry, an MYP unit carries its statement of inquiry, global context and criteria-tagged tasks, and Diploma and CP core components are tracked per student. The IB Engine is where those structures live. Its AI can draft lesson plans and suggest unit ideas, central ideas and lines of inquiry for a teacher to edit and save.
The limits. skodle does not supply the curriculum itself: the IB's subject guides and framework documents remain the source, and the content of your school's units is your team's. The gap report covers PYP and MYP units and depends on the objective mappings people approve. The curriculum engine is built around the four IB programmes, and a Cambridge or CBSE syllabus is not modelled the way an MYP unit is.
How the four programmes connect
The programmes share a philosophy and a vocabulary. The learner profile runs through all four, approaches to learning develop the same families of skills at increasing sophistication, and inquiry, reflection and international-mindedness recur at every stage. A student moving from the PYP to the MYP meets familiar language and habits at a higher level, and a student moving on to the Diploma meets the same ideas in the extended essay and theory of knowledge.
The continuum is designed, not compulsory: a student can join at any stage, and a school can offer only one. What connects the stages in practice is how well a school records learning so that each stage builds on the last.
How a school builds its own curriculum
Inside each framework the school decides what to teach and when, and documents it: unit planners, a scope and sequence, a curriculum map. The relationship between those is in scope and sequence versus curriculum map, and the process in how to create a curriculum map for an IB school.
Choosing between programmes
Which programme a student takes follows from age and from what the school is authorised to offer. The PYP, MYP and DP or CP form a continuum, but a school can offer just one, and a student can join at a later stage.
