"WE ARE SO ANGRY! #ibscandal": Covid-19 and the International Baccalaureate
Saira Fitzgerald
Visiting researcher at CASS
In this talk, I will present work in progress and discuss some preliminary results of a study examining discourses in global press reports and Twitter relating to the International Baccalaureate (IB) final examination results. These reports and tweets appeared over a two-month period, July-September, 2020.
As a result of Covid-19 and worldwide school closures in 2020, the IB organization cancelled its high stakes diploma examination for the first time in its 52-year history and, in its place, devised an alternate form of assessment based on an algorithm. The results for 174,355 students in 146 countries were published on July 6, and showed large discrepancies between students' predicted and final grades, which placed the postsecondary aspirations for many in jeopardy. Students, parents, teachers, academics and journalists demanded to know how grades were calculated and what statistical model was used. An online petition calling for "Justice for May 2020 IB Graduates" with the hashtag #ibscandal collected 15,000 signatures within the first four days.
This study is part of a larger research project on discourses surrounding the IB, which up to now have shown an overwhelmingly positive prosody constructed through repetition and incremental effects. The present study aims to uncover values and attitudes associated with the IB in this new context that previously may have been hidden or taken for granted. Preliminary findings point to shifts in discourses that can be linked to events taking place in the wider world, providing a rare and important window into the impact of "the global education industry" on students.