Two of the world’s leading authorities in education, the International Baccalaureate (IB) and Tes, the world’s largest community of education professionals with over 8 million registered users, have announced a major new collaboration, which will see the launch of a resource-sharing service to help improve learning outcomes worldwide.
The collaboration will combine the size, scale and credibility of the two prestigious organizations to support teachers in curating and sharing teacher-created resources and best practice in IB teaching and learning from across the world, via a dedicated education community hub.
Dr Siva Kumari, Director General of the IB, commented: “Teachers in the IB community are known for their ethos of sharing best IB teaching practices generated across all age groups, in very diverse schools internationally. This collaboration will allow our already interconnected world to be more international than ever before.”
A focus on educators
The service, planned for launch in 2018, will initially focus on the Diploma Programme (DP) and be available in English. Ahead of the launch next year, the IB will be recruiting an advisory team of teachers and education experts to ensure that the platform fully meets the needs of the global IB community. As part of the continuous development of the service, the IB and Tes will be seeking broad-based user feedback to guide future features and additions.
Continuous educational innovation
A key function of the service in the future will be a sophisticated algorithmic review and ratings system, which will showcase submitted resources relative to a set of stringent IB standards. Resources which are rated particularly highly will be given prominent placement on the site to ensure they are easily found and widely disseminated among educators.
Dr Kumari continued: “The collaboration between our two organizations will make possible the IB’s vision to create an IB Agora on its own: to allow IB teachers to share teaching resources with each other globally, while the IB validates these resources, and shares high value educational practice with an even larger world of non-IB teachers.
“It is especially timely given the prevalence of web-based teaching and learning and Tes’s competency in this area, that the IB and Tes are cooperating to add significant value to teachers globally. Teaching is a noble profession and teachers, we know, do not have enough time to create new resources every day. This initiative is to salute teachers’ efforts in IB classrooms around the world, and to enable them to share with their colleagues across the world or in the next country.”
Lord Jim Knight, Chief Education & External Officer at Tes, said: “Tes is delighted to be working with the IB to help IB teachers come together online. The IB is unique in combining an inspirational global vision with a world beating curriculum. At Tes we are very excited to be extending our global resource sharing platform to offer this dedicated community of teachers their own space for sharing professional expertise.”
Notes to editors
About the IB
In 2018, the International Baccalaureate (IB) celebrates its 50th Anniversary. Pioneering a movement of international education in 1968, the non-profit foundation now offers four high quality and challenging educational programmes to students aged 3-19 years old. Through a unique curriculum with high academic standards, we champion critical thinking and a flexibility for learning by crossing disciplinary, cultural and national boundaries. The IB currently engages with more than 1.4 million students in over 4,775 schools across 153 countries. To find out more, please visit 50years.ibo.org.
About Tes
Tes is committed to making teachers’ lives easier. We are one of the largest digital communities of any profession anywhere, connecting more than 8 million educators in 197 countries across the world. Teachers and schools come to tes.com for advice, news and professional opportunities, and we free them up to focus on what matters most – changing people’s lives through education. For more information visit tes.com
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Lord Jim Knight, chief education and external officer, Tes
Dr Siva Kumari, director general, International Baccalaureate
