The IB Chemistry programme (along with the other Group 4 subjects) is due to be revised to start teaching in September 2014 with the first examinations in 2016. In October last year 24 participants (including 16 IB teachers) held the first review meeting which looked at Group 4 subjects as a whole. The first subject specific meeting will be held early this year. The report of the October 2010 meeting has just been published and practicing IB teachers can download it from the Chemistry page on the Online Curriculum Centre (OCC).

Two major recommendations emerged from the meeting. The first concerned Higher Level and contains no real surprise. The new Higher Level courses must be up-to-date and be a good preparation for students to go on to further study at university as well as giving them an element of all round scientific literacy. The second recommendation addresses the fact that the meeting felt that there is no clear distinction between Higher Level and Standard Level courses. It is proposed to design a new Standard Level specific course called ‘Science and Technology’. This course would be for those students who may not study science again but will provide them with an understanding of scientific issues and how they impact upon their lives. This course may, or may not replace existing subject-specific Standard Level courses. For those of us with longer memories this has echoes of the concept behind the old (pre-1996) Standard Level Applied Chemistry which was very much a Chemistry course for those not going on to study science at university or beyond.

The meeting also looked at Internal Assessment where it was acknowledged that the present scheme is still problematical. Some time was spent discussing the fact that state of the art software has blurred the distinction between real and virtual investigations. Practical activities need to be widened to take on board new developments in technology and to reflect the real world of science. As I predicted in my blog on Practical work and assessment it seems likely that more of it could be assessed through written papers than is currently the case.

The meeting also looked at assessment and intends to reduce the Standard Level examinations to just two papers and also reduce the number of options offered to four. Surprisingly there is no mention of the assessment weighting except to say that Internal Assessment may be reduced from 24% to 20%. The IB is out of line with other major international examinations in the weightings it gives to the Objectives (see my earlier blog on Syllabus content). The IB gives 28% to the higher level of thinking Objective 3 whereas the Cambridge Pre-U, for example, allocates 40% of the total marks for this with less on factual recall. I hope in future meetings this will be discussed.
 

One other thing that surprises me is that there seems to be little discussion about how the sciences differ. Only since 1996 have the three sciences Physics, Chemistry and Biology followed the same IB model. Why should this be as they are very different subjects? They may all follow the scientific method but they do it in very different ways. The IB does recognise this fact with Design Technology, a Group 4 subject which is allowed to be different - why can't Chemistry also go its own way? 


There are still more than three years before the new Chemistry syllabuses (syllabi?) come into being. If past experience is anything to go on the final versions will incorporate some but not all of these suggestions – watch this space.