Smaller classes and global friendships: studying online for the International Baccalaureate Diploma

Speaking to María Delgado Álvarez on the phone from the small city of Huesca, Spain, it’s clear that she has a global outlook when it comes to her studies. “If people here go to university, they go to local universities to study humanities. When you tell anyone that you want to study pure mathematics, they look at you with a strange expression,” she says. But thanks to King’s InterHigh – an online school – and its International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP), Delgado Álvarez is part of an international cohort, has friends around the world, and she has her sights firmly set on the world’s top universities.

Since studying for the IBDP – which is a two-year course – at King’s InterHigh, “traditional” school feels like a distant memory to Delgado Álvarez. “I was enrolled in a bricks and mortar school in my city,” she says. “But online school is so much better. There’s an innovative approach using emerging technologies, and having an international class means we interact with different cultures and beliefs, and we all have different areas of interest. That’s better than all being from the same place.”

The format of learning is also innovative. The classes connect to video conferences and teachers don’t just explain the subject. Instead, for each topic, the first class is called an inquiry. “You don’t get exposed to the topic [instantly], so you have to discover for yourself why it’s important,” says Delgado Álvarez. Then, there’s a knowledge session, where the teacher explains the formal side of the subject. Next, the pupils go on to the experience class, where they use different methods – such as quizzes – to test their knowledge, she says, and this is followed by “assessment lessons to check how we’re doing and if we need to revise something”.

Classes are smaller than traditionally. There are never more than 20 students in a class and, as students get to select classes and opt for the higher or standard level of each subject, most classes end up having about 10 students in them.

Aside from the IBDP – which is an alternative to A-levels for students aged 16 to 19 – King’s InterHigh offers a number of other qualifications, following the British curriculum of iGCSEs and A-levels, to children aged seven to 19. The school enables students around the world to access an education that might otherwise be inaccessible, for reasons such as geography, learning approach, or language. “For many students and families, an online IB education is the precise solution to their needs and preferences,” says Nicholas Wergen, global education director at Inspired Education, an international provider of private schools.

Alessandro Capozzi, head of sixth form at King’s InterHigh, says there’s a certain criteria that needs to be met when applying to study the IBDP. “Students need to have a clutch of good GCSEs, at grade 6 or above, and it is beneficial to have been successful in previous studies to be able to cope with the rigours of the IB. It’s a broader qualification than A-levels, with more contact hours, and can prepare students effectively for university and the world of work.”

The students at King’s InterHigh are driven, motivated and want to do really well, says Capozzi. “You don’t have the distractions you would expect in a physical school, and students can study at the pace they want to. Students can get into a rhythm that they maybe didn’t have previously, learn faster than at a mainstream school and even pursue a sport or enterprise, fitting their studies around commitments.”

For Delgado Álvarez, one of the most positive things about studying online is getting to use new technologies. “Besides virtual reality, which is so cool, you can see your school in the metaverse, and we go to classes over there. It’s so amazing because we don’t have the limitation of reality. In physics, we play within different gravities, in economics we go inside businesses and understand how they work.” There are also more than 80 extracurricular clubs, from yoga and gardening, to oil painting and future tech.

Though students aren’t in a physical space where they can interact with other students daily, there’s still endless opportunities to get to know fellow students and to make new friends. “I started making friends from the very first day. We have a peer tutoring system that we use within our cohort, where students explain subjects they are proficient in,” says Delgado Álvarez. Wergen agrees: “We’re creating a genuinely global cohort of IB students working together as one class but based all around the world.” And the students will have opportunities throughout the year to catch up with their classmates in person – from a class trip in Croatia, for instance, to the option of summer camps all over the world.

Delgado Álvarez is aiming for the best. And this, she says, is what the IB does – it makes you feel that you can go anywhere in the world, that you’re learning to be a global citizen. “I think the IB and online school is the future of education.”

King’s InterHigh is now enrolling for its fully online IB Diploma Programme for September 2023. For a flexible, innovative and expert-taught pathway to top universities, visit the King’s InterHigh website to discover more.