Tony Blair’s £2.5m drive to expand the number of state schools offering the International Baccalaureate (IB) comes after years of growing dissatisfaction with A-level standards.
Frustration about the early specialism A-levels encourage and its inability to discriminate between able and exceptional candidates has led to 95 schools in the UK deciding to offer the IB diploma to their sixthformers, 51 of them in the state sector. The number is set to grow, with at least 100 state schools expected to opt for the IB by 2010, according to the Department for Education and Skills.
