“It’s a big step forward.”

That’s how Olli-Pekka Heinonen, director general of the International Baccalaureate, describes the unveiling of a new pathway that is being added to its flagship Diploma Programme (DP) and will be available to schools worldwide from 2030.

The Systems Transformation Pathway (STP) programme, which has been trialled over the past three years at four schools around the world, was officially approved by the IB’s board this month and will move to early adopter phase in 2028 before the wider rollout.

“The big picture is the pilots worked the way we wanted them to, and the feedback from students and educators has been very positive,” says Heinonen.

Even with this positivity, Heinonen admits that making changes to the IB’s flagship courses has been a “balancing act” to ensure that the new offering adheres to the ethos of the organisation’s founding principles - while also helping it to evolve for the modern era.

“[The STP] very strongly values the ideas of the initial 1968 Diploma, because there is this idea of social purpose, to enable young people to make a difference in the world, a better and more peaceful world,” he says, speaking to Tes at the Education World Forum in London.

Heinonen adds that recent events in the Middle East underline why this is so important.

“I think all that is happening in the world is making it more important for young people to have that ability [to understand the world], and the kind of future journeys and change leadership capabilities that are needed.”

As such, Heinonen is confident that he and his team have been able to “innovate something that is very in line with the history and heritage of the organisation”.

The IB Systems Transformation Pathway

So what is the STP actually about?

At its core is the idea that, rather than learning about individual subjects, students learn about large-scale systems in the world, such as food, biodiversity, migration and energy, and how they interact.

A document from one of the pilot schools - UWC Atlantic College in Wales - puts it in the following grand terms: “Working in a variety of transdisciplinary and real-world contexts, students grapple with some of today’s most pressing issues: how to feed 8 billion people on a warming planet, how to restore and protect the biodiversity of ecosystems, how to transition away from polluting energy sources quickly and equitably, and how to respond to mass displacements and migrations as a result of conflict, climate change and disasters.”

What’s more, rather than a teacher talking and students taking notes to repeat in an exam, the idea is that “experiential learning is a key part of the approach”, with students taking part in projects, community engagement activities and collaborative exercises.

“You are engaging in making a difference by using your knowledge, [and] offering solutions,” says Heinonen.

Projects from students involved in the pilots speak to this ambition, with themes ranging from creating better support systems for refugees in local communities and improving local children’s knowledge of biodiversity, to changing perceptions around the reintroduction of wolves into a local habitat and efforts to reduce food waste.

Heinonen says this aspect has been one of the most positive elements of the pilot feedback, with students saying how much they have enjoyed this sort of work because it feels purposeful.

“[Students] are still saying that it’s a lot of work, but it doesn’t feel like that much work because it’s so motivational for them to engage with those big questions and to do something concrete in the communities that are valuable for them.”

Standing out from other curricula

Heinonen says he believes this is one of the main ways in which the STP will stand out from other curricula available.

“There’s been that idea that once we tell the young people enough, then when they are prepared with all that knowledge and they go out to the world. Then they are capable of taking action,” he says.

“But how are you capable of taking action if you’ve never done it? If you have not practised it anywhere? I think it is that element that many education systems are lacking.”

The STP will not sit fully outside of the traditional DP, though; instead it will form a new aspect of the wider programme.

Normally, for the DP, students study three higher-level subjects and three standard-level subjects, and do the two core elements - the theory of knowledge (ToK) and the extended essay (EE).

However, with the STP, students will still take three higher-level subjects and complete the ToK and EE, but only one standard-level subject. The rest of the time - 300 hours to be exact - will be spent on the STP.

Assessment will also be different. Rather than taking exams, students will be assessed internally and externally (each carrying 50 per cent weighting) through a mix of individual and collaborative projects, competency portfolios and case studies.

Heinonen says this approach offers a more “cheating-proof way of assessing”, especially in the AI era. He notes, for example, that the collaborative project will be almost like a “brainstorming session in a team atmosphere”, which it will be impossible to cheat in.

Teaching the teachers

Of course, any new programme of study comes with some big questions - such as will universities and their admissions teams understand what students are presenting when they apply for places?

“We have been doing that [talking to universities] already,” says Heinonen. “But definitely it’s also the next phase we’re entering. We’re not changing the structure of the DP, but we want to engage universities to ensure they understand what we are doing here.”

The bigger issue, though, is how the IB will ensure that teachers around the world, even those well-versed in the IB, are able to teach these new courses. This is something Heinonen admits has perhaps been the biggest challenge they need to focus on.

“I think the main learning [from the pilots] is that, especially with educators who come with a subject teacher background, it is a new approach with a transdisciplinary approach,” he says.

As such, the IB is now “entering the phase when we are training the teachers and educators to be capable of training their colleagues before the full global rollout in 2030”.

Heinonen reflects that this is something he knows it is important to get right from his time in the Finnish education system.

“There was a reform in Finland that brought with it a lot of critique that teachers were not prepared and there wasn’t any structure or professional development, and that created a lot of uncertainty,” he says.

“So we’re really going to use these years to make sure teachers are ready to implement this once we are there.”

No time to wait

Certainly, it seems as if plenty of schools will want their teachers to be ready, with Heinonen saying the IB has already had a lot of interest in taking part in the early adopter programme from 2028.

“During the pilot phase we got a lot of questions asked from schools about whether they could join, and now it is the possibility for the forerunner schools to join in,” he says.

With Heinonen having commenced another five-year term as director general, he’ll be there to oversee all of this work, which by 2030 will mark the culmination of almost 10 years at the organisation, the bulk of which will have been spent on bringing the STP to life.

He admits that such a long time frame requires patience, but he also knows how much work lies ahead, and that it’s work that needs to begin quickly.

“The years go pretty fast, so to be ready for 2030 we really have to run fast to get the teachers ready for it, and everything else ready for it. So there isn’t that much time,” says Heinonen.