The pre-university International Baccaulaurete Diploma Programme (IBDP) at Sri KDU International School is truly an enlightening experience.
Pratik Raghu, a current IBDP student, chose this programme as he saw it’s a prime opportunity to diversify his range of skills. The programme requires students to explore a number of academic and co-curricular avenues. Being ambitious and prepared to sweat for two years, he took full advantage of Sri KDU’s IBDP scholarship offer.
Winson Lee, who is studying chemical engineering at Imperial College, London, took the IBDP because he wanted something more than just studying and regurgitating facts. Believing that there was more to learning, he wanted a programme that was fun and enriching and he found that in IBDP.
The IBDP is renowned all over the world for its emphasis on both academic achievement and personal development. At Sri KDU, the IBDP team of educators strives to merge the academic and the personal, providing students with professionally taught core subjects and multitude of social and educational experiences.
Apart from tackling purely academic subject such as Mathematics, English Literature, Chemistry, Physics, Economics, Biology, Psychology, French, Spanish and the unique IB Theory of Knowledge, where one learns about ways of learning, the students are put to the test by applying the theoretical knowledge to practice.
On his favourite subjects, Pratik chose not to assign an order of preference to his subjects as doing so would make him adopt a negative attitude towards some aspects of the programme, thus preventing him from realizing his true capacity.
However, he finds English A1 and Economics consistently nudging his mind into gear, saying that English A1 allows him to express his opinions freely while the latter subject furthers his understanding of situations that he is surrounded by,
The IBDP programme was not without its challenges. Winson shares that in his programme, you have to make time work for you because you cannot afford to skip lecturers yet score in exams. The programme takes up a lot of time and this is where prioritizing comes in.
As for Pratik, he found the workload intensive with many responsibilities to attend to simultaneously. The Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) activities curricular cannot be condensed and internal assessment deadline cannot be delayed. He states that he does not pretend that he has mastered the balancing act but that he has been pushed to make optimal and efficient use of his time.
The CAS activities in the programme are an obligatory component whereby students get the opportunity to be involved in artistic pursuits, sports and community service work. By virtue of CAS, students are exposed to and made aware of life outside their academic pursuits.
The IBDP is obviously another alternative for pre-university courses albeit a challenging one, but it aims to mould a complete, wholesome individual, as opposed to one whose concerns is limited to academic achievement.
To conclude, the most important element that Pratik and Winson have learnt through the IBDP is that tactful multi-tasking is essential for a productive and fulfilling lifestyle and that learning is more than just picking up a textbook and reading it – it is about soaking in the knowledge tub. For details on the IBDP, call Sri KDU International School 03-6157 8123 or e-mail info@srikdu.edu.my or visit www.srikdu.edu.my for more information.
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