Is it worth it?

[monster_face]

What are the pass rates? I'm in the second year of IB students my school has and I'm going into grade 12.

I only ask this because out of the grade 12's that just graduated, 17 failed and 18 passed! There have already been

2 girls that dropped out, bring my class number down to 17.

So my question is, is it worth it to stay in? Is this pass/fail rate normal? Or is it something to do with they way they were taught?

[sweetnsimple786]

That's a pretty high fail rate!

My first thought is that the teachers or the school is at fault. However, you can have the best teachers, and their efforts'll be wasted if the students aren't putting effort into their education.

Do you know why those 17 failed? Were they diligent students when it came to IB assessments? They can be top of their class but not care about the IB.

Poor study habits or bad time management can factor in as well.

Or it can be the teachers' fault

Most likely, it's a combination. If you're motivated, then even bad teachers can only hinder you so much. I say don't let the statistics daunt you. Be in the other 50%. You'll have to put more effort in and study extra and perhaps teach yourself, but many students here do that anyways.

Good luck!

[Peachez]

Wow, that really is a high failing rate! :/

If I were you, I would continute doing IB. Even if you do fail, you will learn much more than in regular classes. Well, I suppose it depends on which University you would like to attend because some Universities do not care if you were in IB or not. While as others only determine whether to accept you or not by your final grade. I would sya that it mostly depends on your future University/College plans.

Although, like I said, I would continue doing IB. In my opinion, you will gain much more knowledge doing IB than not doing it since IB is considered to be one of the hardest programs nowadays.

I hope this helps. Let me know your decision.

[Tilia]

That is indeed a huge fail rate!

I suggest that you talk to some of those who graduated/failed and try to figure out if it was due to laziness or stupid school. Don't let this scare you, IB is worth it, but maybe you should check if there are other IB schools close to you.

[Sandwich]

That is a really poor pass rate. If you've already done a year of IB though, I'd wager it's too late to drop out (otherwise I'd say to avoid it with a punt pole). It's just not worth switching to a better programme after a whole year.

As other people have said, find out what the school did wrong and actively work to make sure it doesn't happen to you. Whether it's deadlines, poor revision, poor teaching, not sticking to the syllabus... whatever, take your education into your own hands! O: Get your hands on all the appropriate things for the subjects you're taking and hope.

The big problem with having a very poor teaching school is that they crap up your coursework / EE etc. on your behalf. We had some epic remarking of some of ours, which iiiiisn't good. It makes the difference between grades big time, especially for science. Ask your teachers what people got for coursework the year before, and how badly they were remarked. If you find your teachers admit their marking was way off, PANIC! IAs can be really hard to nail. You'll have to put in a lot of extra effort to fix your situation

[monster_face]

I have taken your advice and talked to the students and teachers. The teachers have said that when school starts back up they will have a meeting, to explain what is to be done.

The other students (who passed) have said the ones who did fail didn't study ect, that they where too cocky. The ones who failed on the other hand, say the it must be the teachers fault for predicting them wrong

[Sandwich]

I have taken your advice and talked to the students and teachers. The teachers have said that when school starts back up they will have a meeting, to explain what is to be done.

The other students (who passed) have said the ones who did fail didn't study ect, that they where too cocky. The ones who failed on the other hand, say the it must be the teachers fault for predicting them wrong

We had an identical meeting at our school! Our year above failed (well, screwed up basically) and so we all had a panic after IB1 to find out what went wrong. Our teachers said exactly the same thing (they didn't study and were too arrogant to knuckle down), but realistically speaking, what're the probabilities? Of one teacher being wrong or of every single IB student being of degenerate moral character?

Myyyy suggestion, having been in one of these in which the wrong things happened (our teachers concluded "everybody a year older than you was stupid and couldn't be bothered, not our problem") is to press them to point out where the big holes are. For instance it turned out that out of 24 people, nobody in the year above had achieved more than 1 bonus point. Why? Nobody had got above a D in TOK. Similarly nobody did well (above a 5) in SL/Studies/HL Maths. Why? Never touched a single past paper. No time!

So ideally we would have had a new TOK teacher and additional lessons so we had the time to complete past papers in maths (which we arranged with the teacher in the end). That sort of thing is what you want to press them for, to find out the big holes which affected almost everybody and correct for them with instant solutions. I'm sure you probably had in mind that sort of thing anyway, but really make sure you press them to find out where the holes are. Honestly, it's never going to be that an entire cohort of people were stupid, lazy and cocky.

[Taigan]

It really all depends on your school. This year, in my school, around 60 passed and only 4 failed. So I guess that means that the teaching in your school may not be up to the standard. If you feel that there is a chance you will fail the diploma, then by all means, do not take it. The teachers will always claim that it's the students' fault if they do badly in IB but this isn't always true. And since a very large portion of the IB did badly then it definitely can't be all because of the students. There is something not right about the teaching system for IB in your school, and I, frankly, wouldn't take the risk.

Edited August 27, 2009 by taigan