The International Baccalaureate Organization aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the IBO works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

Overview of MYP Program
The Middle Years Programme (MYP) provides a framework of academic challenge and life skills for students aged 11-16 years. The five-year programme offers an educational approach that embraces yet transcends traditional school subjects. It naturally follows the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and serves as excellent preparation for the Diploma Programme (DP).

Schools may subscribe to any or all of the programmes, although none is a prerequisite for another.

The framework is flexible enough to allow a school to include other subjects not determined by the IBO but which might be required by local authorities. After consultation with the IBO, and provided certain conditions are met, schools enjoy much flexibility in terms of the language of instruction and languages taught. The MYP, like the DP and PYP, is based on the premise that education can foster understanding among young people around the world. Intercultural awareness is central to the programme, to enable future generations to live more peacefully and productively than we do today.

Students at this stage—early puberty to mid-adolescence—are in a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development. This is a time of uncertainty, sensitivity, resistance and questioning. An educational programme needs to provide them with discipline, skills and challenging standards, but also with creativity and flexibility. The IBO builds its programme around these considerations but it is also concerned that students develop a personal value system by which to guide their own lives, as thoughtful members of local communities and the larger world.

© 2005 International Baccalaureate Organization