IB explained, for parents

The International Baccalaureate Organization is a non-profit foundation headquartered in Geneva, founded in 1968. It is not a national curriculum authority like CBSE or a state department of education. It does not set a syllabus for a country, and it holds no jurisdiction over any school except through the relationship it builds directly with that school.

That relationship matters. A school can call itself an "IB World School" and teach any IB programme only after going through the IB's authorization process for that specific programme. It must continue meeting the IB's programme standards to keep that right. In practice, "IB school" is not self-declared. Ask any school directly which programmes it is actually authorized for, since a school can be authorized for one IB programme and not another.

The IB offers four programmes together as what it calls a continuum, running from roughly age 3 to 19: the Primary Years Programme, the Middle Years Programme, the Diploma Programme, and the Career-related Programme. Skoolur's teaching covers Class 1 to 10, which maps onto the Primary Years Programme and the Middle Years Programme - the two this page focuses on.

Notice the overlap between the middle two rows - the IB itself describes PYP as running to about age 12 while MYP begins around age 11, specifically because the transition age is a school decision, not a fixed rule. A ten- or eleven-year-old student may be in either programme depending on that individual school's structure.

The Diploma and Career-related Programmes sit at Class 11 and 12, outside Skoolur's Class 1 to 10 range, and are mentioned here solely so the entire IB continuum makes sense. If your child is younger than that, PYP or MYP is what genuinely applies.

This is the single most important thing to understand about the IB at primary and middle level, and it is a deliberate design choice rather than an inconsistency. The IB supplies a framework - PYP's transdisciplinary units of inquiry, MYP's subject groups and global contexts, stated learning outcomes for each - and leaves every authorised school to build its own actual curriculum content inside that framework. There is no IB-published Class 4 textbook in the way NCERT publishes one for CBSE schools.

The consequence runs through everything a parent experiences. Two PYP schools may be running entirely different units of inquiry in the same term, using resources the school itself chose. Two MYP schools may sequence the same subject differently across the year. Even the choice of textbook, if any single one is used at all, is the school's own decision within IB's approved resource guidance rather than a fixed prescription.

This is why any tuition that claims to teach "the IB syllabus" as a single, fixed thing is describing something that does not exist as a document. What exists is your specific child's specific school's specific unit - and the only honest way to plan around it is to see what that school has actually set, in the same way we ask CBSE and ICSE parents for a photo of the contents page.

The IB differs from mark-based boards in how students are assessed, and this shapes both the Primary Years and Middle Years Programmes in different ways.

In the Primary Years Programme, assessment is built around formative and summative tasks tied to each unit of inquiry: observation, portfolios, student reflection, and a culminating exhibition in the final year. Rather than percentage-based examinations, students receive descriptive reports. If your child comes home with narrative feedback instead of a mark sheet, don't think they're being let off something—they are being assessed correctly for this programme.

In the Middle Years Programme, subjects are assessed against criteria specific to each subject group, not against a single mark scale. In the final year of MYP—which aligns with Class 10—schools may choose to register students for the optional, IB-validated on-screen eAssessment. This includes on-screen examinations in several subject groups and a mandatory personal project. Importantly, whether a school offers eAssessment is the school's choice, not an IB requirement, so ask your school directly rather than assuming.

We want to be direct about what we are and are not, because the IB's own authorisation process makes this distinction important. Skoolur is not an IB-accredited provider and does not run an IB programme. What we offer is subject-level tuition - maths, English, science and the rest - aligned to whatever your child's own school has actually set that term.

• PYP-age children get oral, inquiry-focused sessions with no marks pressure, in keeping with how the programme itself is meant to feel at that age.
• MYP-age children get subject-specific help planned around their own school's units and criteria, since the content genuinely differs school to school.
• Where a school has opted into MYP eAssessment, we plan the final year backwards from that once you confirm the school is registered for it.

The starting point is the same as every other board on this site: send a photo or a note of what your child's school has actually assigned, and classes are built around that. Rates for group and one-to-one tuition are on the fees page, with a free assessment first.