IPC – Learning Today For Tomorrow
S
ome of you may already know or
be familiar with the story of the
International Primary Curriculum (IPC)
and its background. The IPC website
(www.greatlearning.com) is a great
resource for this. But let me relate a little
bit of this background to you briefly now,
as the history and ongoing development of
the IPC does have a direct bearing on the
Chinese Thread here at Keystone Academy.
The IPC was developed in the 1990s as
a curriculum for the children of staff
employed by Shell (an international oil
company). At the time, Shell had a large
number of operational sites around the
world, and the growing international
nature of their company called for a school
curriculum that would meet the varied
needs of company children. Different
backgrounds, countries, cultures and
educational systems meant that the
curriculum had a big job to do in uniting
an understanding about the world, and
promoting ‘international-mindedness’.
While initially the IPC was developed for
Shell schools and then for international
schools, it didn’t take long for national
schools to see the benefits of the curriculum.
Schools in the United Kingdom and also in
The Netherlands embraced the curriculum
as a way of ensuring students engaged
with learning, and developed a capacity
for international understanding. While
Keystone Academy is not exactly a ‘national
school’ in the same sense, it is a Chinese
school, and international-mindedness is a
key learning goal for us too.
In understanding how children get
to international-mindedness, one is
reminded of Howard Gardner’s ‘…
continuing decline of egocentricity’, which
is his way of saying that as a child grows
and develops s/he moves from the self to
the other, from the inside t