DP curriculum alignment studies (2023-2025)

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This page highlights a series of standards alignment studies comparing International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) courses with their upper secondary equivalents from a range of countries and jurisdictions around the world.

In these studies, the research team from Ecctis compared DP courses, at both standard level (SL) and higher level (HL), across three dimensions:

  • Learning outcomes: A comparison of the key knowledge, skills and competencies that students are expected to be able to demonstrate upon successful completion of a subject.
  • Content alignment: A comparison of the extent of overlap of the fields of knowledge that are taught and learned within the curriculum of a subject. Curriculum content is typically split into topics and more specific sub-topics.
  • Demand: A holistic measure of academic challenge, evaluated using four criteria: revised Bloom’s cognitive skills, depth of knowledge, volume of work, and outstanding demand. This dimension assesses the complexity, depth, breadth, workload, and potential for intellectual stretch within a subject.

Below are key findings from each study, along with the complete Ecctis reports for the following countries and jurisdictions.

Additionally, the following reports evaluate the alignment of specific DP subjects with corresponding upper-secondary subjects across 11 countries or jurisdictions (Australia (Victoria), Brazil, Canada (Ontario), Finland, France, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, and the United States).