IB-een there

The International Baccalaureate is a replacement for University Entrance exams, and are internationally recognised. If you are in NZ, and want to go for an international university, this is better than the NZQA. It's not an easy exam, it takes two years to build up to it, and over your summer break, you are expected to write a substantial essay that provides some major contribution to a subject of interest (with in the realms of the fact you are year 11/12).

One school around here that's doing IB is Scot's College. According to the article, they started it back in 2010.

However... they did give this a go back in the mid 1990s. How do I know? Well, confession time, I was at Scot's College, and I was in the program.

There were about a dozen of us, and we had a separate class and was supposed to be more advanced learning. We still did the year 11 exams, so that was fun... and then most of them pulled out. So it was me and someone else. Over the summer break, I was aware of the essay, but didn't really do anything about it, and had no idea what we were supposed to be doing... and then in the second year, the one guy pulled out and I was advised to also do that. (This was near the beginning of year 12 so not too much of the year was wasted.)

Interesting to see they brought it back, and it looks to be working... but I was there 15 years earlier. (#Hipster!)

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