Embedded Files
Program Council, February 25, 2025
Program Council, February 25, 2025
You'll see a list of which class/group brought up a matter, what the matter is about, a suggestion from the students, and then in red, the response from the Principal.
Thank you as usual for your participation in class and program council and trying to help improve the program!
Class/Group
Category
The matter wished to discuss or inform
Suggestion from class council
IB22
IB Specific
Streamlining/standardising, information and instructions (TOK specifically)
Coordinate between teachers and different groups, have each group have only one teacher (marking and teaching), could go back to rotating between teachers in DP1.
Thank you for the suggestion. We took a survey and have analyzed the data together as a team. We see that TOK at the school is an area that can be improved. Any changes we implement would be for next school year.
Note
-teachers do internal standardization/moderation on exhibition and essay.
-the exhibition will have/does have the same deadlines for all groups this school year.
IB22
IB Specific
Students would appreciate more timely information about international University application processes.
To have more specific and important information given out during meetings, and to have meetings earlier, before deadlines have passed.
All deadlines have been on the IB Program Calendar website since the start of the school year. I have also at times reminded in my newsletter prior to a deadline coming out (but less consistently ).
I have also the information on the internal website.
The SYV is also aware of this as an area of improvement and a representative from IB22 will meet the SYV to share feedback.
IB22
IB Specific
Some students feel that specific courses could have benefited from having more practice papers before mock exams, as some courses have never written specific papers before.
Ensuring that all teachers provide information and practice for each assessment criteria before the actual mock exam.
Have you asked your teacher for more practice papers or mock exams? It would be at their decision to do this or not as we only have a limited time for mocks.
IB22
IB Specific
Our class feels that it would be good to explicitly inform the pre-IBs about the fact that different countries view different subjects in certain ways, and to look up the requirements of the countries they are interested in studying in before choosing their subjects.
Yes, thank you, this practice is in place. We give PreDP this information when we go through subject selection. They must even research at least one non-swedish university.
IB23
IB Specific
Test Dates not on managebac
Mentor time happening too often; usually for information that does not need to be presented in person.
Remind teachers to post in advance, particularly with larger assignments such as summatives, internal assessments and internal orals. Deadlines would ideally be on Managebac a week or two in advance. In this way, its easier for both the teachers and students to organise their time and coordinate with one another.
Instead of having a mentor class every time information needs to be sent out, things such as google forms and CAS information may actually be more effectively distributed by being posted online, such as on Vklass. Workshops are still more effective in person, however smaller mentor times can often either be stacked together into one or posted digitally.
Principal has requested prior and requests again that students inform DPC directly which subject does not have deadlines up in MB because we have addressed this and they should all be up. We asked this at the last meeting.
Mentor time: Has been cut down already based on prior student feedback. It's why there is no mentor time every week.
Some information the school will deem necessary to give or work with face to face.
Further discussion indicated that the mentor time comment is more specific to class council. It is being held differently in different groups and sometimes doesn't take very long. This can be an area of development for the program, thank you for the feedback.
IB23
Whole school specific & IB specific
3 things came up that were not prior submitted on the form due to some misunderstanding or miscommunication about where the mentor group should meet/so that the class council was not able to be held.
1. It can be exremely cold in some rooms.
2. Clarification was requested about SL and HL hours
3. Inquiry into a long lesson
The matter about cold rooms is for påverkansråd and will be forwarded to them. But please also remember to bring it up there.
Each subject handles the SL hours differently. Sometimes SL students can be off for weeks at a time, while other SL students may need to continue all year long to a certain degree. The decision of how it is done has to do with the nature of the subject and the best conditions for continued learning, for which it is the teacher who has the mandate to make this decision.
The long lesson inquiry: this should be discussed with your teacher directly. Note that as a rule we avoid schedule changes this late in the year and that since upper secondary education is voluntary in Sweden, if the student is enrolled in the program, then attendance is mandatory. I.e. priority must be given to the school schedule first and after school activities second.
IB23
IB Specific
1. IB should get in contact with tuition organisations and then recommend/promote to students who might be in need.
2. Teachers should teach TOK in similar ways (because there is a large disparity in the amount of classes which have started their exhibition and those who haven't and how far they've come)
1. Just get in contact with tuition organisations
Tuition is something that is privately handled between student and tutor. The school does not have this service. If a student is interested, we can recommend Lanterna's services for revision courses.
https://lanterna.com/courses/#choose-course
Courses cost 530 GBP and students can book directly online.
Students who are at risk to not meet the goals: we have preventative and proactive measures for individual students, you can read the Inclusion policy and Assessment policy for more information.
Any individual who feels they need support can talk to their mentor and/or Krista and/or James and/or anyone in the student health team.
2. Set similar deadlines/start dates for specifically the exhibition, the suggestion was limited only to that.
Principal notes the exhibition has the same deadline across all groups this school year or it will.
See also the first point above, thank you for your feedback.
IB24
IB Specific
Teachers have smaller but more numerous tests.
We discussed this in program council and this can be a topic for discussion with teachers too. Thank you for your feedback!
Students are interested in more frequent low-stakes testing/quizzes to help with memory, recall, and learning. As opposed to one very big summative assignment that is high-stakes.
IB24
IB Specific
- The 2 groups made for PE is kinda not fair. Some of us have PE 8 in the morning every Monday and Wednesday and it can be kinda annoying especially if you have Spanish/French/German in the morning on Wednesday. Otherwise many of us have a big gap every Monday and Wednesday.
One suggestion is to flip it completely for this term, since the group that had it in the morning have had it for a whole term now and the other group should have it in the morning now. This can resolve many issues with people that have a Modern Language added to their schedule on Wednesday.
I (Principal) have looked into it. The time to make a change in schedule that affects an entire group of approx 30 students would have been in the transition from Autumn to Spring term. Now Spring term has started and we will not make any changes of this type of substantial nature.
IB24
Whole School Specific
4 - 5 hours breaks in some peoples schedule. Lunch lines being very long, especially during mondays leading to people being unable to have lunch.
For the lunch lines, make peoples breaks more spread out.
This feedback has been shared with the school leadership team and schedule department from last program council. There have been changes made to improve it but some days it is still not ideal. You can share again at Påverkansråd and will be forwarded to them again.
IB24
IB Specific
Actually Whole School
The sanitary pad machine in the sport's locker room is a great addition. However, it could be improved since several students tried using it, but it did not function properly.
One solution could be to install a few additional machines to ensure accessibility and reduce the likelihood of malfunctioning issues.
Please take this up at påverkansråd, thank you, and I will also bring it up too.
IB24
IB Specific
Feedback on schedules and deadlines in Vklass. Currently, the breaks between classes are long, and everyone has different schedules, which can make the day feel extended.
Consider shortening the breaks and moving classes closer together so that students can end earlier.
Additionally, it would be helpful to have all test and assignment deadlines consistently posted on Vklass for better organization.
About the schedule: the school operates on a block system and it's unlikely that shortening the breaks can work because many teachers work in other programs, this will create a clash. We discussed that a school day is like a work day and yes, sometimes there are gaps and that is when you have an opportunity to practice your approaches to learning skills by using time management, prioritisation, and accomplishing work on your to-do list.
About Vklass: Principal will ask the PreDP teachers how things look with Vklass and if an improvement can be made there.
IB24
IB Specific
- Not being able to experience all sciences before picking our subjects. we want to know if we are good at it and enjoy it before selecting it as a subject next year.
- We thought we were able to change our subjects that we chose in the draft through the final selection form but we were recently informed that we can’t and it's just to make sure if subjects don’t clash.
- Seperate teacher and student presentations regarding subjects. Most of us found it wasn't organized.
- Mentor time at the same time as Swedish
- Either provide examples of worksheets, questions, textbook, etc that could help us understand or give us an idea of each of the subjects or you could split science groups based on oreferences.
-Clarify it to furture students
- Keep it more organized in the future by keeping signs or organizing it in a specific way which makes it easier for us to understand which student represents which subjects.
-Try to combat it in the future
I sent a message about this in Vklass.
: All sciences are able to be experieced and/or you can definitely ask your teachers for examples and etc. before you experience the final science.
: Yes you are going to get a chance to make a final subject choice! In fact, I'll intentionally keep it to be later so that you have a chance to start the final science rotation.
: Thanks for the feedback on teacher/student presentations
: We understand mentor/swedish clash is not good and regret this has occurred this school year.
Students suggested they can please have an update happen for those swedish students who couldn't be there? Please discuss this with your mentor for things specific to mentor time. For other presentations, Principal can ask that they post them in Vklass after the visit.
Page updated
Report abuse