Diversity, equity and inclusion

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At the IB we want to understand and celebrate differences within our community, while recognizing and valuing the things we have in common. As we all strive to achieve our mission of creating a better world through education, we cannot underestimate the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.

As the IB seeks to take concrete and proactive measures on diversity, equity and inclusion we are adopting a new statement upholding these values. As a global education leader, we aim to provide guidance on ways to cultivate practices that address racism, implicit bias and discrimination of all kinds through an inclusive IB education for our students and community.

Purpose of the statement

The statement’s purpose is to provide clarity as to what the IB stands for in relation to diversity, equity and inclusion. It has been constructed as a positive statement of IB values, to ensure our whole community continues to live up to our mission of education for a better world. Its aim is to provide guidance to the IB community when making day-to-day decisions on matters related to diversity, equity and inclusion. 

We hope you will join us as we embrace the challenge of addressing diversity, equity and inclusion, whether it is through evolving our curriculum and language policy or improving our access and inclusion efforts. We invite our community to read through our commitments and to envision how these values can be woven into the important work each of you is doing in your own schools and communities.

Diversity, equity and inclusion statement

More than 50 years ago, the IB was born out of a commitment to develop a new way of thinking about teaching, learning, and assessment–grounded in education for a better and more peaceful world. Our historic mission emphasizes our shared humanity and the bonds that tie us together in one global community. Our responsibility to the world and to the people and systems that shape its future is enormous. Our resolution to continuously improve to create a better and more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect must always reflect current thinking and changing expectations around the globe with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion. Humanity and its relationship to and with the planet are complex. We want to understand and celebrate our differences while recognizing and valuing the things that we share in common with each other and the rest of the earth.

As we begin our journey under new leadership and set out a renewed strategy that will guide us forward, now is the time to refresh and solidify our commitment to a series of values, and to commit to living by them both in our work internally as an employer but also as a global education organization with enormous reach and responsibility to shape the learners of the future.

We aim to live these values through these commitments:

  • The IB will embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in our work—and reflect this commitment as we develop our policies and procedures—both as an employer and as an educational organization
  • We commit to promoting human rights and the idea of one shared humanity in all our work, both as an employer and as an educational organization
  • The IB commits to promoting justice—social, economic and ecological—in our work, both as an employer and as an educational organization
  • Alongside our community, we will work to help protect the environment and the local ecosystems that form it
  • The IB will foster a sense of agency and enquiry in both the people we work with and the young people we help to educate
  • We embrace learner variability so that our learners are not excluded on the grounds of any of their characteristics, and so that our stakeholders can develop and thrive in a culture of equal opportunities for learning, personal growth, and developing the ability to make positive change
  • The IB commits to act supportively and with consideration for young people affected by difficult or adverse circumstances, their own changing personal histories or contexts, or other challenges affecting their life as IB students
  • We will work to promote the voices, identities, and leadership of marginalized people in our work, both as an employer and as an educational organization. We will be transparent in all our policies relating to the people we work with and as we work with our educational programmes and resources through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens
  • We will explore new ways to open our programmes and our work to new languages, cultures and contexts
  • The IB commits to being fully focused on the needs of our staff, IB World Schools and their educators and students, as we challenge ourselves to become a more diverse, open, inclusive, and accepting organization, standing against racism, prejudice, discrimination and marginalization wherever we can.

Our commitment

We recognize there is still work to do to ensure we are living up to these values. Whether that is through evolving our curriculum to reflect thinking and ideas from around the world, deepening our understanding on the role of language for cultural identity, or developing courses and curriculum which all students can engage with, our journey begins with equity and international mindedness.

These pledges are by no means the end of our journey. But we hope they are a sign of what the IB stands for in 2022, and an indicator of where we hope to go.

Photo: ©IB/UWCCostaRica/ClaraDominguesdaCruz/2021