Comparing and Contrasting IBPYP and HighScope

Whilst HighScope focuses on its COR advantage assessments for child development, the IBPYP curriculum uses formative and summative assessments to monitor children’s progress. Both curricula put a heavy burden on teachers for daily note-taking and assessment of the children for portfolios. The COR advantage assessments are more clearly laid out and easier to assess whereas the IBPYP provide no clear continuums for guidance with assessment on the learner profile at their core which make it difficult to conceptualise how a student has progressed towards these desired qualities.

The HighScope within its COR advantage assessments focus on specific learning objectives to achieve for each subject taught, however, the PYP curriculum unfolds from transdisciplinary themes that involve project-based learning experiences covering many subjects.

HighScope offers clear guidelines and goals to teachers and requires them to create their own themes and unit resources within the HighScope guidelines, on the other hand, the IBPYP curriculum offers overall expectations and suggestions leaving the teachers to plan and design each learning experience accordingly creating a lot of variation from teacher to teacher. Both curricula rely on highly skilled and professional teachers to tailor their lessons according to their guidelines requiring a lot of planning time to effectively achieve their curriculum goals.