Getting Started FAQ

FAQ about Informing Parents

• We are at the stage of introducing the IPC to our parents. Are there any fliers, booklets or posters of IPC for this?
• Is it true that all the international parents want their children to be international? Don't they want their children to be successful in their own culture?
• I want to send the letter to parents but can't find out how to copy or save it in order to modify it. How do I do this?

FAQ about Informing Teachers

• How could a school administrator or teacher be convinced to take on the IPC, its implications and cost, without first seeing it as a whole so they can judge its value, amount of extra planning etc?
• How do you anticipate an International School with a high 'turn-over' rate and their (new teachers) adapting to IPC Units and the teaching expertise needed for success?
• Does the IPC produce e-newsletters?

FAQ about Professional Development

• How do I find out about training on offer form the website?

About the IPC - The Answers

How do I become a member of the IPC?

Once you have purchased the IPC programme, you become eligible for membership. You will be a member of the IPC global community which includes schools from over 50 countries over the world. There is an annual charge for IPC membership which includes many benefits such as new and updated units, on-line and telephone curriculum support, membership discounts from a variety of reputable educational suppliers, access to the IPC website Members’ Lounge, planning advice and route checking for assurance of appropriate curriculum coverage and much more. If you want have any specific questions about IPC membership get in touch. You can contact the IPC Membership Team at +44(0)20 7531 9696 or email janice@greatlearning.com or soumaya@greatlearning.com

What is included in IPC membership?

IPC membership provides significant support to schools who are using the IPC. For a start, members can call or email our dedicated membership services team for help on any IPC related issue and we do our very best to respond quickly to every enquiry. In addition, membership provides you with full access to the IPC website Members’ Lounge. Here you can download all the IPC units of work including new and updated units, you can make direct contact with other IPC member schools from all over the world, you can share ideas, questions and discussions through the IPC Blog, and you can obtain resource and support ideas. Another very popular service included within IPC membership is our planning advice and route checking service which means that you can ensure that your selection of IPC units provides you with appropriate curriculum coverage. Other IPC member services include regular informational newsletters and subscription to the IPC magazine Eye On The World, special IPC member discounts from a number of reputable educational suppliers, IPC teacher recruitment support, professional development support , member discounts to IPC training, conferences and Summer School, IPC self-review protocol and IPC Accreditation.

What is the IPC definition of 'internationalism'?

We talk about an international dimension in education. By this we mean that a school should aim to help children develop both a national and an international perspective with:
- knowledge and understanding beyond that related to their own nationality
- an understanding of the interdependence of people, countries and cultures
- an understanding of the independence of people, countries and cultures.

Is the IPC a curriculum based education rather than an international child-centred education?

The IPC is both of these, and we believe that both are needed to help children learn effectively. Schools need a 'formal' curriculum around which they can organise learning and teaching. If you have ever had a child in a school which doesn't have one you'll know just how important it is.

But that curriculum also needs to reflect the central importance of the child, to be truly 'child-centred'. The IPC is child centred in a number of important ways including the appropriateness of the Learning Goals, the suitability of the Units of Work, and the relevance of the ways of working.

We really believe we are producing a child-centred curriculum that will help teachers in classrooms.

Where is the methodology of the IPC?

There are a number of important aspects to the IPC methodology. They include:

• the independence and interdependence of the different subjects as children learn


• the opportunity to use visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles


• the opportunity for children to research and record their learning using their multiple intelligences


• the organisation of work around themes which are of intrinsic interest to children.

What are Mile Posts?

A Mile Post is a stage by which most children should be capable of achieving certain learning goals.

• Milepost One is used for 5 – 7 year olds.


• Milepost Two is used for 7 – 9 year olds.


• Milepost Three is used for 9 – 12 year olds.

What is your relationship with the IBO particularly IBPYP? Are there plans to tie IBPYP and IPC?

The IPC is an independent organisation and as such has no formal links with the International Baccalaureate or with its Primary Years Programme. But this does not mean that we are in direct competition, either. We support all attempts to help international schools deliver an effective education for their children.

How is it different from IBPYP?

We share with IBPYP the aim of improving the education of children in international schools. We support and acknowledge all those schools which have set out to do this using PYP. But there are some differences between the IPC and PYP.

The most important ones are:

• The IPC began by making the Learning Goals (the skills, knowledge and understanding children should learn) explicit. Everything is geared to helping children achieve those Learning Goals.
• The IPC specifically sets out to address the issue of the development of an international mind set. It even has Learning Goals and activities specifically related to international understanding.
• The IPC provides schools with Units of Work which teachers can quickly put into practice with children. These units include activities, teaching advice, information for parents, assessment advice and more.
• The Units of Work are organised in such a way as to reinforce the concepts of 'independence' and 'interdependence', concepts crucial to the development of an international understanding.
• The activities and teaching strategies have been specifically designed to take into account recent research into how the brain works.

If the Units of Work are 'blocked' around certain subjects (e.g. the next one is the science one) - what about your 'frequent flyer' who will continually miss blocks of learning?

This question raises one of the most important issues in international education. 'Frequent flyers' almost always miss blocks of learning, wherever they move. The IPC addresses this to a degree by making sure that the target points for learning are more spread out - the ages of 7, 9 and 12. But there is no getting away from the fact that this is a real issue which everyone involved in international education needs to address.

Without prescription built into the programme, how can you ensure some subjects (e.g. Science) aren't missed?

The IPC will recommend a sequence of units which will ensure that all subjects are covered. The truth is that we can't prescribe anything to a group of individually operated international schools around the world.

Our view is that schools should involve themselves in self-evaluation or an external review procedure. The criteria for such reviews and self-evaluations must include the right of children to receive their full entitlement to the whole curriculum.

Do IPC Units contain Physical Education?

The IPC PE Learning Goals provide all the guidance necessary for a PE programme to be put together in schools. Many of the PE learning goals are covered by activities in the units, but not all.

In response to requests from schools, particularly those which use specialist teachers for PE, there is now Specialist Programme for PE for every IPC Milepost.

Where can I find examples of Design Technology in the IPC Early Years?

There are numerous activities of the ‘Plan/Design and Make’ type in the units themselves - these usually have a Cr. label in the tasks column.
Within these activities lie the supporting Strands -

Strand Two
18 materials and technology used in creative and expressive arts
19 using the processes of art and craft
20 using different media to express a mood or a feeling or for representing information

Strand Three - Exploring
1. making decisions, choosing their own materials and setting their own problems
5. playing with ideas and materials as an enjoyable, creative and valid approach to learning
7. actively exploring and making sense of the world by using tools, materials and equipment.
10. setting and solving problems
11. looking for patterns, classifying things for a purpose, guessing, using trial and error.
12. Identifying and using information from a variety of sources
13. explaining, listening to others, taking part in reflective discussion, planning and observing
15. choosing and experimenting with materials, playing around with ideas, and exploring actively with all the senses.
19. spatial representations such as maps, diagrams, photographs and drawings

Do you have any curriculum units for 4-5 year olds available?

The IPC Early Years Programme is used for this age group and it can be adapted for younger children in Pre-School settings.

Where can I get a copy of the simple matrices?

These are available to IPC Membership schools. First you should log-in to the website, click on Learning File on the Main Menu then you’ll see the matrices for each Mile Post on the right hand side of the page.

How can we use the IPC Units in a two year cycle to cope with mixed year groups? (e.g. mixed Y1/2, or mixed 4/5 etc?

Thank you for your question about mixed age year groups. Because the units are designed to be selected across the Milepost (2 years) they can be interchanged to achieve a balance of subject, personal and international goal coverage. The skills that the children will develop over the two years will be revisited and embedded as they develop their learning within a milepost. Mixed year groups would therefore mean that you would need to develop a 2 year rolling programme of unit choices so that the children are having a variety of experiences and not necessarily repeating units.

We have some samples which we can send to you if you email us directly.

How do the IPC Early Years Strands link to the English Foundation Stage Goals?

The IPC is currently developing a cross-reference document for the IPC Early Years Strands and the Foundation Stage Goals. This will be produced for 2008-09 for our Membership schools.

We are a UK school and need some help with Home and Host countries. Is our Host country the one in which our school is located, or is it the one we choose as a whole school to focus on for the international elements?

The names "Host" and "Home" countries were originally devised for international schools. Host being the country the children live in usually because of their parents work and Home being the country of their origin.

Schools in the UK are approaching the Host and Home country in several different ways. Some decide at the start of a unit to adopt a country to make comparisons, other schools look at one country per year group per term and many schools look in depth at one country that the whole school can research and form a link with.

We suggest you refer to your Home country as the UK and the Host being the other countries you wish to make a comparison with. These other countries could be countries which have a particular significance because of the cultural background of the children in your class. Or you could choose countries of particular significance for your location - for example your town may be twinned with a town in another country. Some schools use the same comparative countries throughout; some change them from year group to year group and some schools select different school wide countries studied by all classes in one academic year.

What is important is that children should begin to develop an understanding of international by developing their understanding of national. They should develop awareness of the culture and background of the country in which they live, in order develop a meaningful understanding of the lives of others.

How many schools and how many countries use the IPC?

At the beginning of 2009 we had almost 600 school in 52 different countries in the IPC learning community! Please refer to the Community section of the IPC website for the latest number of schools.

Why has the IPC been so well received in so many countries and in schools with very different student populations?

One of the reasons the International Primary Curriculum has been so well received is that it was born out of a real-school context.

Amongst many other things, our "parent" company Fieldwork Education manages schools for Shell International all around the world. Some years ago, everyone working with and in those schools realised that a new curriculum was needed. We set out to find one.

Of course, we had criteria. They were built on a growing understanding of the future needs of primary and elementary children. These criteria were challenging but we expected at least one curriculum to meet them.

You can imagine the rest. We didn’t find the curriculum we were looking for. And so we set to, with groups of teachers, headteachers and principals, to produce our own. No sooner had word got around about what we were doing that interest mushroomed from many other international schools.

And so the International Primary Curriculum - which responds to the key issues of the 21st century – was born. What were the criteria we set out to meet?

1 The muscle economy is going, the knowledge economy is here

Technology is increasingly replacing muscle. Now, it’s knowledge and understanding that count. All around the world, jobs go to the people who know and understand what is happening. Knowing things, knowing how to do things and understanding issues are the keys to future success.

We think that any 21st century curriculum must help children acquire all three. The International Primary Curriculum sets them at the heart of everything it produces.

2 Lifelong careers are going, portfolio working is here

Just one or two generations ago a job for life was normal. Now, work is very fluid. Even staying with the same company means that you can expect to change location, task or focus. But it is increasingly likely that our children will not stay with the same company. Increasingly, ‘work’ now means a portfolio of jobs rather than one single job.

We think that any curriculum for the 21st century must help children develop the resilience, inquisitiveness and learning skills which will be essential to deal with change throughout their lives. Every unit of work in the International Primary curriculum gives children the chance to develop these personal goals.

3 National boundaries are diminishing, internationalisation is here

International understanding has become vital. The ability to work in and relate to different cultures is crucial both to the new world of work and to our continuing hopes for a peaceful planet.

We think that a curriculum for the 21st century must explicitly help children develop an international perspective as well as reinforcing their own cultural heritage. Uniquely, each unit of work in the International Primary Curriculum provides activities specially designed to enable children to develop both.

4 There are new ways of learning

Research into the brain is filtering into the classroom. Newer approaches to learning are being developed. Some are still at the research stage but others, such as multiple intelligences, the role of the emotions in learning and learning styles, are more secure.

We think that a curriculum for the 21st century must help children learn in the best ways we know how. Each unit of work in the international Primary Curriculum provides activities specifically related to multiple intelligences, emotional involvement, memory and learning style.

5 People need values

Not everything changes, of course. The core values that make people respected, trusted and liked still apply. Values such as honesty, respect, co-operation and caring still matter hugely.

The International Primary Curriculum helps develop these by providing units of work in which children can explore and develop their own personal growth in a context they understand.

6 Teachers want to think about learning more than anything else

The main purpose of teaching is to help children learn. Too much teacher time is being taken up with meetings and tasks which don’t focus on learning.

We believe that a 21st century curriculum shouldn’t increase the amount of work teachers have to do. Through providing hundreds of tried and tested activities in more than 70 different units, the IPC provides teachers with the basis of everything they need to help children learn.

7 Teaching and learning should be fun

For many teachers and children, teaching and learning is becoming mechanical, no more than a series of stages to get through. Whilst standards are obviously important – and the IPC’s learning goals underline that importance – both teachers and children should enjoy what they are doing.

We believe that a 21st century curriculum should help children see learning as pleasurable. Each of the activities within the IPC – and the themed units themselves – has been written to be enjoyed.

Is the A4L password and login different to the one we use for the IPC website? If so, how do I get one? Also, can the data on the A4L computer records be transferred or should one have just one computer which hosts it so that all the data is cumulative?

Schools that have IPC Membership are able to access the A4L database with a different login username and password from the one they currently use to access the IPC website. This is sent out by our administration team. If you do not have one please contact the IPC office.

The information on the A4L database is easily transferred and updated, giving each teacher access to their own class in addition to whole school records.
If your school does not have membership please refer to the Membership Services section of our website, or contact the IPC office for further details.

Is there a published list of IPC schools?

Yes, we have a list of schools which we can email to you. As you can imagine, the list is constantly growing so becomes very quickly out of date. The best place to view where IPC schools are is by looking at the map under the ‘Community’ section of the website.

We are in urgent need of non-fiction books for Mileposts 1 & 2. Can you please put us in touch with publishing houses that have made up packs for IPC units?

There are several publishers which have offered to put packs together linked to IPC units.
Madeleine Lindley; they offer a 10% discount to IPC schools and have a good selection of non-fiction books www.madeleinelindley.com
The Kent Book company has a great range of high quality book packs linked to most IPC themes www.kbc.eu.com
Brown’s Books are keen to support IPC schools www.brownsbooks.co.uk
Scholastics Publications are also able to supply high quality resources and will help to put themed packs together for IPC schools http://scholastic.co.uk
Also, don’t forget to browse through the resources section of our Members’ Lounge for great ideas uploaded by our teachers and the IPC team!

Informing Parents - The Answers

We are at the stage of introducing the IPC to our parents. Are there any fliers, booklets or posters of IPC for this?

We have a PowerPoint presentation which can be used with parents, which offers a great opportunity to have a dialogue with parents. Some schools personalise this using examples from the units of work the school has chosen, which really helps to bring it to life for parents and to see the IPC in context.

The IPC Parent Letters, sent home at the beginning of each unit, also helps to familiarise parents with what will be happening with each unit. These can be personalised and adapted to suit the school and are a great way to get parents involved. Using end of unit Exit Points or holding Open Events after, or during, a unit, provide an opportunity to invite parents in to see the IPC in action and interact with their children in the learning process.

If you send us your email details, we can forward a copy of the PowerPoint to you.

Is it true that all the international parents want their children to be international? Don't they want their children to be successful in their own culture?

We don't think it's a matter of 'either/or'. Our view is that most parents want both for their children.

Encouraging the understanding of and a feeling for one's own culture is as much at the heart of the IPC as is understanding the interdependence of cultures around the world. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that the second is dependent on the first.

However, it is also true that schools sometimes have to be brave enough to take a stand on behalf of children which might not yet be agreed with by the parents of those children. We are convinced that the development of an international understanding is crucial to all young people entering the twenty-first century.

International Schools are in a particularly fortunate position to help develop that understanding and it is one that we want to encourage through the use of the IPC.

I want to send the letter to parents but can't find out how to copy or save it in order to modify it. How do I do this?

All of the IPC parent letters are now available in word format and easy to modify and adapt for your school. They can be found every IPC Unit in Your Programmes on the IPC website.

Informing Teachers - The Answers

How could a school administrator or teacher be convinced to take on the IPC, its implications and cost, without first seeing it as a whole so they can judge its value, amount of extra planning?

It's difficult, which is why we are trying to let as many people as possible have access to sample units, the Learning Goals, the Principles and answers to questions such as these.

Some schools have made the jump early on. These are the 'pioneers' and we are grateful to them. But we also appreciate that the 'explorers' wouldn't come on board until they had seen enough to convince them that it was worthwhile doing so. The 'settlers' will arrive last of all, when we and the member schools have clearly shown the usefulness of the IPC in helping schools and teachers develop children's learning in an exciting, practical but not too time-demanding a way.

All of these approaches have their own validity and we want to support each of them.

How do you anticipate an International School with a high 'turn-over' rate and their (new teachers) adapting to IPC Units and the teaching expertise needed for success?

A high level of staff turnover is another important context within which many international schools have to work. We think the IPC will be a positive advantage to these schools because a great deal of what we will provide for schools is so explicit.

What children should learn (and, therefore, what teachers must teach) is explicit in the Learning Goals. The activities teachers can use, the resources they need and how they can assess and record the work of their class is explicit in the Units of Work. Approaches to teaching the IPC are explicit in the subject guidance and so on.

Each of these components makes it easier for teachers to put the IPC into practice and for schools to develop real continuity.

Does the IPC produce e-newsletters?

We have Members' e-newsletters which are sent out regularly. This year we plan to send out 3 types of newsletters to everyone on our mailing list -
2 Professional Development newsletters per year
2 General newsletters per year
2 IPC Magazines per year

Every year we ask schools to update their details so we can make sure our mailing list is up-to-date. If you think your school might be missing out, please get in touch and we'll check out your details on our mailing list database.

Professional Development - The Answers

How do I find out about training on offer form the website?

Please look under Professional Development on the main menu of the IPC website.