On March 23, International Baccalaureate announced that the May 2020 examinations scheduled between April 30 and May 22 will no longer be held for the Diploma and Career-related Programme students in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For many students, the two years of classes they take are all in preparation for these final exams which make up the majority of their IB score and determine if they earn their diploma.
IB writes that “depending on what they registered for, the student will be awarded a Diploma or a Course Certificate.” They stipulate that receival of the certificate will be based on “student’s submitted coursework and the established assessment expertise, rigor, and quality control already built into the programmes.”
For many IB classes, students have already submitted some coursework, such as IAs, or Internal Assessments. It is unknown if these will be used to assign IB scores, or if IB will use predicted scores, which are predicted grades that teachers send to IB and are reflective of the grade the candidate is expected to achieve in the subject.
In a poll taken by 34 of the 39 IB Diploma Candidates at East, 25 students said that they were concerned about the score they would receive for some of their classes if IB awarded them the scores predicted by their teachers.
The uncertainty of how IB will proceed with awarding scores for courses has also affected students’ projected college costs. In a poll taken by 33 of the 39 IB Diploma Candidates, 23 students were depending on at least some of their IB course scores to test out of college courses.
Senior Lily Turner isn’t too concerned about receiving her diploma, but wishes IB would release an alternative way for students to take the exams to receive college credit.
“I think considering the circumstances they’re doing the best that they can,” Turned said. “But I kind of wish they could’ve done what AP is doing and still given us a limited test so that we could still receive college scores.”
IB has released answers to anticipated questions here.