The IB Advantage
21 Nobember 2025
I love the IB. It is a world-class, globally revered programme, and I know the profound lifelong impact that it has on young people. It’s easy to forget that we are an IB World Continuum school as it is so embedded into who we are as a community. Not only are we required to offer a rich and challenging curriculum across the Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme and Diploma Programme, but there are many more characteristics of the International Baccalaureate Programme that enable learning inside and outside of the classroom to shape learners into thoughtful global citizens who solve problems. The evidence is the countless graduates who have told me how prepared they were for university and what I’ve seen in the development of my own children.
When they were very small, my husband and I had to make a decision about whether or not to enroll the kids in local school or have them at ICS with me. My husband could not be more Swiss. His father was a professor at the ETH and the Gemeinde President (town mayor) for the Fällanden region for most of his career. His mother is a ‘Bündnerin’ and grew up in a small mountain town. Going through the Swiss educational system himself, including Gymi (Gymnasium) and UZH (University of Zurich), I was surprised when he emphatically advocated that our kids go to ICS. He had been on campus several times and was blown away by the evidence of inquiry, community engagement and project-based learning displayed throughout the campus. He had also met several teachers who impressed him with their intelligence, openness and passion for teaching. I was proud of our school and there was the bonus of having the kids near me, so I was thrilled that we were aligned.
There is not one day that I regret our decision to have our children join ICS and as my daughter enters the final semester of her Grade 12 year, I am so grateful that she was able to experience all three programs. The IB is layered and within the limits of this Spotlight, I cannot begin to convey the complexities of everything the IB is, but I can highlight a few of my favourite components of this unique and special programme.
As a holistic programme, the IB aims for much more than academic success. Students first learn about the Learner Profile in the Primary Years and are encouraged to be open-minded, knowledgeable, caring, reflective, balanced, principled, risk-takers and inquirers. They are given opportunities to grow, practice, and reflect on these traits. Early in the Primary School, students are taught self-advocacy, agency and how to interact impactfully with their environments. I was taken aback by the student-led conferences and was overjoyed to hear my children talk through their goals and progress in their transdisciplinary learning. They were developing skills that I had no idea were accessible at their ages.
The IB Approaches to Learning (ATL) also sets the programme apart from other education systems. While creating unit plans, teachers pay special attention to ensuring that the ATL skills are being taught explicitly. The five main ATL areas are: Communication, Self-Management, Research Skills, Social Skills, and Thinking Skills. Within these categories are multitudes of skills that learners need as lifelong learners and successful adults. The skills include emotional intelligence categories like empathy, resilience and self-regulation. Some are taught and measured explicitly and some are more subtly embedded into thinking routines and learning activities.
There is so much more to the IB than rubrics, course selection and final exams. Across the school, each lesson is carefully crafted to reflect the values and standards of the programme. Each unit is the result of a group of subject experts planning for the ultimate pedagogical experience. The IB evolves and holds schools accountable through intense accreditation processes and visits and schools have the opportunity to receive feedback and further grow. The best news for us is that ICS does it remarkably well. While we have many attributes that make us unique, we are IB committed and proud to be the only IB Continuum school in the area.
In partnership,
Lindy Hirt
Middle School Principal