High School | Course Offerings
History of the IBDP Programme
With its origins in Switzerland in the early 1960s, the IBDP is a well-established programme of studies.
A group of educators promoted the idea that some kind of international programme of studies was needed to accommodate the growing number of mobile international students who belonged more to the world than to any single country.
The IB Diploma Programme was created in English and French by teachers at the International School of Geneva with increasing assistance from several other international schools. The programme that led to the IB Diploma consisted of a common pre-university curriculum and a common set of external examinations for students in schools throughout the world.
The Diploma programme sought to provide students with a truly international education - an education that encouraged an understanding and appreciation of other cultures, languages and points of view. Schools that first offered the Diploma programme were predominantly private international schools, but they included a very small number of private national institutions and schools belonging to state education departments. This has evolved over the years and today nearly 50% of all IB Diploma programme schools are state controlled, publicly funded institutions.
The International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) has seen tremendous growth in recent years. The Diploma Programme is currently offered in around 3,000 member schools globally. Since 1968, more than half a million students in 159 countries have participated in the Diploma programme.
ISL has offered the IBDP since 1995 and encourages all its students, whenever possible, to engage in the most demanding programme of study available to them. For many, this will be the IB Diploma. For a variety of reasons however, some students may choose to take a range of IB Courses instead, leading to an individual award in each subject, rather than the full IB Diploma. ISL regularly reviews the entry requirements of universities worldwide in order to be able to offer sound advice regarding IB subject selection for students in Grades 11 and 12.
ISL has offered the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme since 1995