The new visual arts course

In just over two years – actually in February 2014 – a draft version of the visual arts guide for the course running from 2014 – 2021 is due to be published. The first teaching of the new course will occur in August/September of 2014.

Last week I spent a few very busy, interesting and stimulating days in the new IB offices in The Hague, discussing in some detail various aspects of the new course.

There will still be at least three more Curriculum Development meetings to put more flesh on the bones of the new course, but the ‘bones’ are certainly taking shape –

• three (not two) components,
• no more option A or option B choices, and
• a weighting that represents the three components in a 25/25/50 breakdown – not 60/40 or even (for those with a long memory) 70/30.

The current name of the new component is ‘Informed Individual Response: contextual and comparative study’ and those at the meeting discussed in depth what we want students to do for this component.

A confidentiality agreement prevents me from going into any detail, and to be fair there is still a lot of room for development and to some extent change.

However, stay tuned – big and exciting changes are coming to the DP visual arts course!