Guernsey’s Sixth Form Centre won’t be running the IB Diploma Programme for new students during the next school year. It’s being paused due to a low uptake.
Those students currently in Year 12 will continue their studies in Year 13, but students joining the Sixth Form Centre this coming September won’t have the option to study the full Diploma programme after only 14 signed up.
Education, Sport, and Culture said it will decide what to do in the long term after making the decision to pause it this week.
Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen, President of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, said a “comprehensive consultation and engagement process will take place between now and October” to try and up the numbers so a decision can be made on offering the IB to students starting at the Sixth Form Centre in September 2026.
“The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme has been and remains a valued part of our Sixth Form Centre’s curriculum for some years now, however the educational experience of the students, with so few in each class, with the inevitable transfer of some students to other subject areas at the beginning of these courses, would have been suboptimal,” she said. “With this decision to pause the Diploma, school leaders can now use staff more effectively to make a wider impact across Education.
“The Committee found this a very challenging decision, not least because it feels too operational, but also because it is very supportive of the IBDP and the breadth of choice at Post 16. In the future this is a decision that school leaders themselves could be making in consultation with their Governance Board, to optimise resources and balance their own budgets. The Committee is acutely aware of the best use of public funds and balancing these against the best outcomes for students including how schools manage their class sizes. Running the IBDP this year would have created a real disparity between some class sizes. Pausing the programme allows school leaders to use resources more efficiently, and we are still proud to be able to maintain a very broad, creative and diverse curriculum offer to students through A-Levels and IB Certificates, with every subject still available.”
The Sixth Form Centre first offered the full IB Diploma Programme in 2012.
Since then, numbers appear to have fluctuated at just over 20 students in most year groups, with 23 completing the full IB Diploma Programme in 2020, and 24 sitting it in 2019.
If the IB Diploma Programme had gone ahead in September, some students would have been taking classes alone with only 14 signed up overall.
ESC said teachers and other staff will be redeployed “more effectively and efficiently across the school and other areas of education, such as enhancing specialist teaching in a number of different areas” instead.
ESC also confirmed that students who started their IBDP in the 2024/25 academic year will not be affected by the pause, with their two-year course continuing to run into the next academic year.
Any students starting at the Sixth Form Centre this September, who had chosen an IB subject as part of their pathway of study alongside A-Levels will still be able to do it, but the full IB programme won’t be available.