IB Syllabus to be Introduced in Government Schools of AP

Oct. 27, 2023, 11:21 a.m.

The Andhra Pradesh government has signed an agreement with the International Baccalaureate (IB) Organisation to introduce the IB Syllabus in government schools from the coming academic year. This happened in a virtual meeting held at Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy's Office. As a result of this partnership, the International Baccalaureate syllabus will be made available to the students of around 45000 government schools in the state.

This collaboration programme witnessed the participation of IB representatives from Singapore, Washington DC, Geneva, and the UK. The event featured the virtual presence of IB Director General Olli-Pekka Heinonen and Chief Business Development Officer Matt Costello, who spoke about the importance of this collaboration. Considering the significance, the Cabinet gave approval for the launch.

The IB Syllabus has a major advantage of nurturing critical thinking and creativity in students. As per the words of the state's chief minister, the main goal of this initiative is to ensure world-class learning experiences for students. He also acknowledged the challenges and said this initiative is part of a broader effort to enhance school education. This effort includes school renovations, digitisation, availability of bilingual study materials, incentives for attendance, -TOEFL exam training, and English medium education in all schools.

In June, the AP Government proposed to include Artificial Intelligence and its tools like ChatGPT and machine learning in the school curriculum. And in August, the government signed an MoU with edX, an e-learning portal for online courses from the best universities in the world. The CM has highlighted the stature of the IB syllabus’s global recognition, emphasizing that the certificates earned by students should hold value anywhere in the world. He also emphasized that the results of the education transformation will be evident in due course of time.