Our experience was not good, but I wouldn't say that it was necessarily because of the IB primary years program. I really felt it was a good fit for the very high achieving students that DS7 was always placed with, but not a great fit for an EG kiddo with asychronous development and what we recently found out was convergence insufficiency that requires vision therapy. I would echo what KADmom said about a very intense workload, particularly with regard to writing. At the beginning of this year (2nd grade), our son was being required to write multi-paragraph essays. Since he was placed in the highest achieving class, he would see that the other kids were able to do the work while he struggled to keep up due to awkward pencil grip that made his hand cramp. He would then have the incomplete work sent home so that he could finish it as homework. I saw his childhood disappearing quickly, as he was CONSTANTLY working on schoolwork.
He was also in a gifted pull-out program at that school where the philosophy was certainly more developmentally-inappropriate work rather than different work. Because he couldn't keep up with the amount of work in his regular class, they would not consider him for full time gifted even though he blows all objective criteria out of the water. . .I truly believe that the school really took the IB philosophy and worked to make it more intense rather than developing a program that works well for gifted kids - again, great for high achievers.
After our son kept displaying more and more signs of stress (frequent vomiting, tics, etc), we really got concerned. The final straw was when he broke down in tears and said, "Why can't I be like the other second graders? Second grade is really a struggle - why can't I be smart like the other kids?" We realized that he had a completely inaccurate view of his abilities. We pulled him from the school and got an out-of-zone placement in a school that does zero ability grouping and has a true pull-out gifted program (as well as a full-time gifted program). He is now in a class with children of all different levels. He gets his work done and I know that we're not stressing his eyes out either. His teacher sees how gifted he is and recommends that he be placed in full time gifted next year. He still gets anxious because that's part of his personality, but the tics and the vomiting stopped within a week of being at the new school.
I guess my point is that you need to be careful to see whether the IB primary years program at your school works for whatever learning style your child has and if it is equipped to deal with any possible 2E issues. I would say that if you have a high-achiever, it's more likely to be a good fit. Our experience, however, was that our particular school was more focused on fulfilling the rigor of the IB program than providing an appropriate education to fit individual childrens' needs. It just didn't work for us.
Last edited by Diamondblue; 11/20/13 03:09 PM. Reason: Add quotation marks and clarify one statement
