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Conversations about the IB programme tend to revolve around the academic requirements. It’s not hard to understand why: the IB is often promoted as preparation for university, and for most people that means tests, tests and more tests. But while academic expectations certainly deserve attention (and careful planning by students and parents), they really form just one branch of the IB Diploma Programme (IBDP). The IBDP’s three core requirements are the Extended Essay; Theory of Knowledge (TOK); and Creativity, Action and Service (CAS). In this article we’ll be focusing on the last of these, CAS.
The point of the CAS requirement is to encourage kids to develop their minds by acting independently. Thus there isn’t much in the way of a syllabus to guide students through the process, and there’s no list of accepted activities on the IB website. Students are expected to plan their own activities, with the help of a CAS supervisor, “who is responsible for assisting students in implementing and developing their personal CAS programmes.”
This degree of freedom can be intimidating for kids whose school experience up to now has been strictly regimented and controlled. Indeed, some students may see the CAS requirement as just an aggravation to be dealt with as quickly as possible before getting back to the “serious” academic syllabus. Often students will attempt the elements of the requirement piecemeal, counting music or art lessons as “creativity”, sports as “action”, and volunteer work as “service”.
There’s nothing wrong with these activities, of course, and they do satisfy the minimum requirements (150 hours over the two years of the IBDP). But many schools are pushing students to invest more time into their projects. One IB school cautions that “fulfilling the time requirements alone is not sufficient; a student’s records[…]must clearly demonstrate quality, balanced content, and commitment for a student to meet the CAS requirement.”
Ultimately, the goal of IB is more than creating students who can earn good grades in university. It’s preparing them to think from a global perspective, to make informed decisions and to assess the impact of their actions on the world around them. While this may seem to be unrelated to academic preparation, former IB students at HKU testify that their CAS experience really did help to ready them for the independence and of university life. And who knows? Maybe working on your project will lead you to find your life’s calling. After all, the experiences of growing up aren’t just found in the classroom.
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