The Analysis That Should Not Exist (Part I)

There is an insatiable curiosity in educational researchers that leads them to defy social norms and say the darndest things about the societies in which they live and the societies in which other people live. No doubt, this is a pronounced tendency of researchers in other disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

However, education is different; like history, it is a discipline that almost every human partakes in from birth. It is a discipline whose right of practice is almost certainly very close to being a basic human right. This is not so for many other disciplines, and in fact, if it were not for education, there would not be many other disciplines.

I have said all this to explain why educational researchers tend to strike more at our core beliefs (and with less accuracy) than most other kinds of researchers. Having said this, I am going to commit myself as one of that reckless crowd and say some things about the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and the city-state of Singapore.

Here are some basics. The IBDP is a pre-university (or senior high school) educational programme. Full details can be found at the IBO website. It is progressive, has many things going for it, and is an ideal education system (well, at least, it is one based on ideals which are clear and widely disseminated). There are some detractors, with interesting arguments linked to malignant globalism and suchlike, but the Programme is generally taken to be A Good Thing (as far as the Asia-Pacific region is concerned, at least, and well beyond).

The main curricular structure of the Programme (besides its ideals and worldwide goals) revolves around three core disciplines. These are Theory of Knowledge (TOK), the Extended Essay (EE) and Creativity, Action, Service (CAS). There are six academic groups which can be summarised briefly thus: Literature, Language, Humanities, Sciences, Mathematics, Aesthetics. Students must take a discipline from each group (although the last group can be replaced by another of the first five groups). I've written more about this in a previous post.

Singapore is known to do well in Mathematics and Sciences. This is a key finding that has been repeated many times; the Third International Mathematics & Science Survey (TIMSS) has provided evidence that this is so (and yes, it has been much proclaimed in PR pieces like this). My conclusion would be that a Singapore school that takes in average Singapore students should outperform (on average) most schools overseas in the IBDP groups 4 and 5 (Sciences and Mathematics). Perhaps more accurately, if the students from Singapore's top 5% are matched against the students from anyone else's top 5%, then the Singaporeans should outscore them in standardised testing.

This leads to a predictable situation. A majority of Singapore students taking the IBDP would take two Science subjects and one Mathematics subject; having done so, the quality of the average grade in these areas would outweigh any deficits in any other areas. Singapore students should do very well then, but only if they concentrate on scoring in the sciences and mathematics. I am not so sure they would do as well in the humanities, literatures and languages which the IBDP offers.

Again, this prediction is made based on very general statistics. However, it is possible to pit the best independent IB school in the UK against the best independent IB school in Singapore. The head-to-head analysis looked interesting, so I carried it out. Guess what I found...