ISJ November 2018: The IB at 50, Developments in the Asia Pacific Region – a golden era

Greg Valentine

My personal association with IB came about in 1993, when I was appointed Deputy Head and IB Diploma History teacher at the newly authorized New England Girls’ School (NEGS), Armidale NSW Australia. NEGS wanted to prepare its rural-based students for a more global, multi-cultural world understanding and tolerant of difference. The IB Mission and its curriculum were to become drivers of attitudinal change. There were 13 IB World Schools in Australia, the nearest approximately 500 kilometres away. The first IB World School in Australia, Narrabundah College in Canberra, was a Government School, authorised in 1978. In the next 15 years all new IB schools, except for Glenunga International High School in Adelaide, were independent schools. A fledgling Association of Australasian IB Schools (AAIBS) had formed in the early1990s and this body, which hosted Annual Conferences and the only set of IB Workshops in Asia Pacific, provided invaluable support for interested IB Schools.