IB AFRICA/EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST

REGIONAL OFFICE NEWSLETTER

February 2007

Message from Regional Director,
Nélida Antuña Baragaño

Dear friends and colleagues

Greetings from Geneva.  As in previous years I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, on behalf of all my colleagues in the regional office and myself, for the good wishes you sent us for the seasonal period.  From our side, we wish you health and success in all your commitments.

With warm regards

Nélida Antuña Baragaño

Regional Office Activities

Since September 2006 the activity in the regional office has been, as usual, very hectic.  Personally I have been involved in several meetings and conferences, mainly related to promotion with ministries of education and universities and recognition of IB programmes, as follows

• I attended the annual EAIE conference in Basel in September 2006 where I had the opportunity to meet representatives of ENIC-NARIC (European National Information Centres-National Academic Recognition Information Centres) and discussed how to improve information-sharing for the benefit of IB students.

• Also in September I participated in the first combined meeting of IB schools, university representatives and representatives from the Ministry of Education in Poland.  There are now 25 IB schools there and interest in IB programmes is increasing in both the private and the state sectors.

• Following our regional conference in Athens in October 2006, the Regional Advisory Committee (RAC) met, at which the President of the IB’s Council of Foundation, Monique Seefried, was present.  Amongst other items addressed, a debriefing on the Conference was held which provided very useful feedback on how this event could be improved upon in the future.

• For three days in November 2006 all the regional managers and myself attended the first part of a management training course, the second part of which, also for three days, will be held at the end of March 2007.

• I participated in the first MERIC (Mediterranean Recognition Information Centre) meeting held in Rabat, December 2006.  Again, it was a good opportunity to meet representatives from universities, the Minister of Education from Morocco as well as other representatives from North African countries.  In spite of there being two private foreign and two private national schools in Morocco, the IB programmes are not recognized but we are working towards achieving recognition.

• In January 2007 the three programme regional managers and myself were invited for three days to visit the King Faisal School in Riyadh, a private non-profit national school, which is interested in implementing the three IB programmes.  During this visit, we also had a meeting with representatives from the King Faisal Foundation which is very interested in the reform of the national curriculum.

• Two meetings took place in February 2007 in Madrid with the MEC, the Council of Universities and representatives from IB schools in Spain concerning the issue of the entrance examination, the ‘Selectividad’, to Spanish universities.  Students who come from the European Union will be exempted from this examination.  We are working towards achieving similar recognition for IB diploma students.

• Also in February I made an exploratory visit to Yerevan, Armenia in order to assess the possibilities of introducing IB programmes there.  During my four day stay, I visited four state schools and one private school.  I also had a meeting with the Minister of Education and other people responsible for education.  The IB is working on the possibility of a project which would be externally funded.

• The diploma programme regional manager, Proserpina Dhlamini Fisher, and I had a meeting, again in February, in Johannesburg with IB schools from across southern Africa and with representatives from South African universities.  The outcome of these meetings was the creation of an IB schools association for southern Africa, a better understanding of the diploma programme by universities and the establishment of a regular channel of communication with them.

The following outlines some of the activities undertaken by Åke Sörman, the deputy regional director

• He attended an IB day for Danish diploma schools in Kolding in September 2006 where he also had the opportunity to discuss future changes in the Danish national system with a representative from the Ministry of Education.  The expected changes will have an impact on the delivery of the diploma programme in Denmark.

• In November 2006, he attended a conference arranged by the Middle East Baccalaureate Association (MEIBA) in Amman.  One of the topics discussed was the provision of workshops in the Middle East and the need for more workshops in Arabic A1, A2 and B.

Regional Office's Strategic Goals

The following activities took place against the background of the regional strategic goals

• In cooperation with CIS we made the first evaluation visit for all three programmes to Munich International School in October 2006.  We are working with CIS on improving procedures for such visits and we have more planned for the immediate future.

• In December 2006 we arranged the following training workshops:

• Workshops in Liverpool for team members on DP authorization visits with particular focus on the UK
• Workshops in Geneva for PYP school visits
• Workshops in Murcia for new Spanish speaking workshops leaders

These are part of the regional office's strategy to increase the bank of workshop leaders and team members available for school visits. We plan to organize such workshops at least once a year for all three programmes.

• In line with the revised structure for DP workshops and conferences, we arranged a conference for group 3 teachers from English and Spanish speaking schools.  The conference provided a good mixture of traditional workshops topics and also offered presentations on general group 3 themes.

• The outcome of the IB's worldwide school satisfaction survey on the services provided by the organization is helping the regional office to focus on aspects of our services that need improvement.

• Our banding exercise was revisited and although the main bands are still valid, the focus of some activities in certain countries has changed because new favourable circumstances have presented themselves, such as in Saudi Arabia.

Band 1: the majority of Western European

            countries

Band 2: Russia, Turkey and the Arabic speaking

            countries

Band 3: Greece, Lebanon, East Africa, West

            Africa and Southern Africa

Band 4: countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa,

            Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria,

            etc.

• Our projects on ‘access language’ (Russian, Turkish and Arabic) are moving forward slowly but surely.  The translation unit in Cardiff has already started the process for Turkish.  We are in the preliminary steps for Arabic.  All these projects are externally funded.

• In November 2006, Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, made an announcement that the government will support the introduction of the diploma programme in one state school in every educational authority area.  We are in contact with those responsible for this project and we forecast an increase of activity in the UK for the next few years.  We have put into place a regular series of training for IB experienced practitioners and administrators to assist the regional office with the anticipated increase in demand.

• Concerning the recognition of IB programmes in general, we are entering a new era.  Recognition as such is no more a big issue but the equivalence with national systems could be.  Therefore we are now working more with universities.

Interdisciplinary teaching project

The IB and researchers from Harvard Project Zero are collaborating to produce a publication in support of interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP.  The principal goal of this year-long project is to generate practical materials that will facilitate teachers’ high-quality interdisciplinary teaching.

To create teacher-support materials that will be optimally useful to MYP teachers, the publication will be informed by exemplary MYP interdisciplinary curriculum units and personal projects from around the world.  The Harvard team has already selected schools in our region for closer study of interdisciplinary units.  Between now and 3 June 2007 MYP schools will be visited by Harvard.  One of these visits will also include the MYP regional manager.

Online Registration System

The events unit continues to develop the online registration system in order to make the process more efficient and improve the service to schools and workshop leaders.

Workshops in Cooperation

It is pleasing to see that more and more schools are interested in arranging workshops in cooperation with the IB.  With the growing number of schools this is an important instrument to meet professional development needs.  If you are interested please contact us for more information (arlina.traanberg@ibo.org).

Training of Workshop Leaders and for School Visits

All three programme units are intensifying the training of leaders and team members for school visits.  Two such events will take place in the near future:

• MYP training for experienced in-school workshops: Istanbul March 2007
• PYP/MYP/DP Training for new workshop leaders: Geneva April 2007