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IB Conducts Results Review Increasing the St. Dominic High School IB Diploma Pass Rate to 93%

IB Conducts Results Review Increasing the St. Dominic High School IB Diploma Pass Rate to 93%

SINT MAARTEN (REWARD) - On August 17, 2020, IB released adjusted grades for the May 2020 examination session. This resulted in changes being made to the marks previously released at the beginning of July. With this review, nearly all students of the St Dominic High School International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme had total point increases from 1 to 5 points. With this increase, 14 of the 15 diploma candidates will now receive the internationally recognized IB Diploma.

The written examinations of May 2020 were cancelled due to the impact of the coronavirus. The IB Organization worked with assessment specialists and independent experts in the education field to design a method to award grades to candidates.

The method used the student coursework called internal assessments, teacher-predicted grades and the accuracy of teacher-predicted grades in relation to student coursework and final results. This year IB graded over 920,000 internal assessments (student coursework) instead of just moderating samples of that work. This meant that each student had the opportunity to have his or her work individually evaluated.

When the results were released to schools, grades were lower than expected and not in line with the students’ performance over the two years of the Diploma Programme.  Those concerns were communicated to the IB organization. In response, IB conducted an additional review which resulted in it recommending grades be adjusted.

With this second review, the school continues its trend of strong performances in the group 3 subject Business Management and group 4 subjects Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science. Significant improvement was shown in the group 5 subjects Mathematics SL and Mathematical Studies SL. The average points achieved by students in both subjects surpassed the world-wide average grade.

Added to the list of noteworthy performances are Naomi Jankee and Srishti Rajani. Both achieved a grade 7 for Business Management HL and received the highest diploma points (35 out of a possible 45) awarded to the school’s candidates. The St. Dominic High School candidates who qualified for the diploma had an average score of 32 points.

Mr. and Mrs. Dharamraj whose second child successfully completed the programme and will receive the IB diploma stated: “[We] believe that the IB programme at St. Dominic High prepares our children well in the broadest possible way. It is not by any means an easy road, but when given the opportunity, discipline, hard work and dedication pays off.”

St Dominic High is one of 3,421 schools worldwide offering the Diploma Programme. The IB Diploma Programme is a rigorous and academically challenging pre-university curriculum where students select and study six subjects from six groups – literature, foreign language, individuals and societies, experimental sciences, mathematics and the arts.

In order to qualify for the diploma, students must complete the following core requirements: a 4,000-word Extended Essay (EE), the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course which examines how knowledge is acquired and the various kinds of knowledge that exists, Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) requiring students to engage in the arts, sports and the community.

The Diploma Programme was designed to not only address the academic needs of each student, but also to target the students’ social, emotional and physical well-being in order to give them the skills to be successful contributive citizens and members of our global community. For more information about the Diploma Programme, visit www.ibo.org.

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