The Middle Years Programme (MYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB) is a global educational program for students aged 11 to 16 years old. It is part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) continuum. The Middle Year Program is designed to prepare students for the IB Diploma Program, which lasts two years. There are 1,358 schools using it in 108 countries. It’s been on the market since 1994. It was renamed MYP: New Chapter in 2014 when it was modified. Students must receive instruction in all eight subject categories during the Middle Year Programme: Language Acquisition, Language and Literature, Individuals and Societies, Sciences, Mathematics, Arts, Physical and Health Education, and Design.

the big picture

In 2014, the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) created a new, more flexible middle school program called MYP: Next Chapter, which was later renamed MYP in 2019. Local curricula could be incorporated within the framework. The comprehensive strategy includes approaches to learning, concept-driven teaching, and the global context strategy, as well as school organization, which includes collective planning, vertical structure, and community collaboration.

Structure of the school

The learner is the center of attention, however, this is accomplished through using an IB approach to teaching and leadership. The inquiry, action, and reflection cycle are used to develop pedagogy. MYP: A new chapter encourages schools to work together to create the curriculum, blur topic lines, and allow individual instructors to exchange their lesson plans across schools. Teachers collaborate with librarians to ensure vertical and horizontal planning, evaluation, and assessment. The school is dedicated to providing continual IB teacher training.

Framework for the curriculum

The six global contexts serve as the foundation for the curriculum. They are usually taught as themes that are mirrored in all eight subject groupings, rather than as individual courses. In addition to these eight subject areas, students in MYP year 5 complete a long-term project (the personal project) on a topic of their choice under the supervision of their teacher (which is graded on separate criteria). The community project is completed by students in MYP years 3–4.

Subject groups
Within each subject group, schools can pick which subjects to teach and how many. Every academic year, however, each subject group must get a minimum of 50 hours of curricular time. Schools might request that students only get 50 hours of teaching in six of the eight subject areas in years four and five.

If a student has sufficient proficiency in both, they could take another “Language and Literature” course (In MYP years 4&5 this could replace the Language Acquisition course). Schools are allowed a lot of leeways to introduce things that they think are important and to create their own student evaluation and reporting procedures.

IB MYP Certificate
The MYP Certificate is the formal internationally recognized award related to the MYP. The MYP assessments are the form of the optional external moderation introduced in 2016. To receive the MYP Certificate, each candidate must complete at least one assessment in each of this area:
● Language and literature
● Individuals and societies
● Sciences
● Mathematics
● Interdisciplinary learning
● Language acquisition (or second language and literature)
● Physical and health education, Arts, or Design
● The MYP Personal project

The subject with the highest score on a scale of 1 to 7 is counted within each category, and the results are totaled to create a total of 56. The pass mark is 28, and the candidate must also complete the school’s Service and Actions requirements.