IBSCA for the 2025/2026 academic year

On behalf of the Officers and Directors of IBSCA, I'd like to introduce our autumn newsletter. I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a successful academic year, and I look forward to working with all our schools over the coming months.

In this newsletter, you will read about several exciting new developments for this year.  

Firstly, I would like to welcome Leanne Gibbons to the IBSCA team. Leanne joins us on secondment from Impington Village College as our new School Support Officer. Leanne introduces herself later in the newsletter, but I would like to emphasise that the thinking behind her appointment is to provide schools with the opportunity for 1:1 support from IBSCA on any aspect of their IB Programmes.

Secondly, I would encourage everyone to follow IBSCA on our LinkedIn page and our newly created Facebook page. These social media channels give us the opportunity to advertise and promote our activities, as well as giving us a platform from which we can continue to promote and espouse the merits of IB Programmes in our member schools. I would encourage as much engagement as possible from our IB schools, and we would love to hear from schools willing to share their own success stories, which we can use to encourage more schools to consider exploring IB programmes.

Finally, you will read about offers for members of IBSCA, including an ALPS discount for DP schools and Ambassador membership opportunities at The Lansdowne Club in London. I am hopeful that future newsletters will include further discounts, savings and offers for members as we work with partners across the educational sector to identify possible collaborative opportunities.

Our work this year will focus on continued support for our members. We are again offering a series of free CPD Seminars on a range of subjects, targeting subject teachers as well as school leaders. These seminars are designed to address syllabus changes or to establish subject-level communities in smaller uptake subjects. We have also agreed to work with ACS to co-produce an updated University Admissions Officers Report. The last version of this was produced in 2017, and we are excited at the opportunity to engage with Universities to understand the current climate in tertiary education, as well as looking ahead to identify insights into the skills these institutions are both seeking in applicants and seeking to develop in graduates. We will also continue the work we began last year, looking at outcomes in DP Language A subjects and considering these outcomes in relation to the prior attainment (GCSE) of students. The analysis of 2024 data has been shared with the IB, and I am hopeful that more data will help to emphasise our arguments regarding the accessibility of the highest grades and the allocation of grades across the range available. 

As ever, if schools require additional support or guidance, we would love to hear from you and work with you. The community of IB schools in the UK is small, but powerful, and I am constantly reminded of the power and impact of collaborative enterprise. We wish you all a successful academic year and look forward to hearing from you.

Richard Markham

Chief Executive Officer

IBSCA