86-87 / 168
St Edward’s:
150 Years
88
89
by a handful of academics in Oxford back in the early 1960s.
Their desire to foster and reward an all-round education that
was not just academic but also extra-curricular, and to develop
the ‘whole person’, remains a central premise of the diploma
programme and proved a decisive factor in St Edward’s
applying to become an IB school.
Much work was done, first by James Cope, to ensure the
School was able to gain authorisation from the IB and was ready
to teach the first pupils when they started courses in September
2008. For the past four years I have led the development and
growth of the School’s IB programme and Alastair Summers
has now taken over responsibility for its management and
coordination. Most of the first cohort, who sat their IB exams in
May 2010, will have just completed their finals, and already there
are OSEs who did IB at almost every Russell Group university as
well as at several prestigious institutions overseas.
The academic headlines have been impressive, with more
than a third of the School’s IB pupils having achieved at
least 38 points (out of a maximum of 45), the starting point
for Oxbridge offers. Katie Battcock remains the only OSE so
far to have achieved the perfect score of 45 points, although
several others have come very close. This was an exceptional
achievement and one which placed Katie in the top 0.5 per
cent of IB students globally. Overall the School’s results have
meant that St Edward’s is in the premier league of IB schools in
the UK and amongst the top few co-educational schools.
Dr Andrew Davis and Dr Garrett Nagle have been pioneers
of Environmental Systems and Societies, a new course within
the Diploma Programme, for which they have produced
several resources and textbooks. The School’s Head of Modern
Languages, Marie-Laure Delvallée, is examiner and author
for several French textbooks. Perhaps the most exciting
development, however, has been the recent publication of
a Geography Revision guide co-written by Ben Tavener, a
current pupil, who has several more in production.
Under the umbrella of CAS (Creativity, Action and Service)
several IB pupils have been heavily involved in the School’s Duke
of Edinburgh and Peer Listening programmes, and many others
have been responsible for various successful charitable initiatives.
Originally under the guidance of Kirsty Jones and, more recently,
Liz Boast, dozens of IB pupils have raised tens of thousands of
pounds, at a House or School level, for a number of good causes.
In this 150th year, when the School’s IB programme is
celebrating its fifth anniversary, it is perhaps fitting that by
September more than 150 pupils will have opted to study
for the Diploma Programme and more than a third of the
incoming Lower Sixth will be IB pupils, the highest proportion
yet for any year group. The future of the IB at Teddies
certainly looks bright.
Matt Parker
IB Coordinator 2008–13
ENGLISH
In spite of the use of data projectors, e-readers, and laptops,
it is still fair to say that English lessons remain unchanged in
terms of their essential characteristics: classes read and talk
about what they have read, points of grammar are addressed
where necessary, and essays on various topics are written and
A practical EPQ project by Joe
Withers Green (A, 2005–10). It was
designed to model the ‘Detonator’
ride at Thorpe Park, measuring
the acceleration and velocity of
his model (with ‘passengers’) and
comparingitwithpublishedtechnical
data on the real thing.
IB Group 4 Project Presentations in the Life Sciences Building attended by
pupils and teachers, 2013.
A display in the English Department.