Planning your two-year course
Sunday 2 March 2025
The long-awaited new psychology curriculum has arrived, and it's time to consider how to plan your two-year course. The following plan is a suggestion, but feel free to adapt it to suit your specific needs. First, there are a few key points to think about.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) recommends specific teaching hours for the course: 150 hours for Standard Level (SL) and 240 hours for Higher Level (HL). Most schools provide 35 weeks of instruction in Year 1 of the Diploma Programme (DP Y1) and 26 weeks in Year 2 (DP Y2), totalling 61 weeks.
However, considering factors such as long weekends, teacher in-service days, school trips, end-of-year exams, mock exams, and designated revision time, the available teaching weeks are reduced to approximately 55 weeks.
55 sessions of 3 hours for SL (165 hours) and 55 sessions of 4.5 hours for HL (247.5 hours) are ideal. Of course, this will depend on your school’s schedule, but it serves as a target to aim for.
The table below includes 52 weeks of teaching, with a generous allowance for revision leading up to the exams. This can be adjusted to provide additional time for class practicals.
Planning a two-year course
If you teach only SL, refer to the left column. If you teach only HL, you can integrate both columns into your plan.
The contexts may be taught in any order. The IA proposal (6 weeks) may be written in the first year; however, one of the contexts (8 weeks) will have to move to the second year. This may shorten the time available for exam revision.
Upcoming post
Many schools teach the SL course in one year. Although teaching the course in one year will be a challenge, especially in the first year, we believe that it is possible.
The next blog post will suggest strategies for teaching the SL course in one year.