Our Values and Commitments

Almost 60 years ago, the IB was born out of a commitment to develop a new way of thinking about teaching, learning, and assessment, grounded in education for a better and more peaceful world. Our long-standing mission emphasizes our shared humanity: to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring individuals who help create a better, more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect. This mission also reflects the bonds that tie us together in one global community.

Our responsibility to the world and to the people and systems that shape its future is enormous. Our resolution to intercultural understanding and respect must always reflect current thinking, varying perspectives, and new expectations around the globe, regarding working, learning, and promoting communities of belonging. Humanity and its relationship to and with the planet are complex. At the IB we want to understand and celebrate differences within our community, while recognizing and valuing the things we share, and through this understanding, support each other in ways that allow us to flourish.

As we all strive to achieve our mission of creating a better world through education, we cannot underestimate the importance of cultivating a sense of belonging, wellbeing, and access in our IB community. The IB will embrace practices that promote intercultural understanding, belonging, wellbeing, opportunity, and access in our work—and reflect this commitment as we develop our policies and procedures—both as an employer and as an educational organization.

Purpose of the statement

This statement’s purpose is to provide clarity as to what the IB stands for in relation to building inclusive educational communities. It has been constructed as a positive statement of IB values, to ensure our whole community continues to live up to our mission of education for a better and more peaceful world.

We hope you will join us as we embrace the challenge of promoting a sense of belonging and wellbeing in our IB schools, whether it is through evolving our language policy or improving our opportunity and access policies. We invite our community to read our commitments and to envision how these values can be woven into the important work each of you is doing in your own schools and communities.

We aim to live these values both as an employer and as an educational organization

We commit to promoting one shared humanity in all our work.

Alongside our schools and community, we will work to help protect the environment and the local ecosystems that form it.

The IB will foster a sense of agency and inquiry in both the people we work with and the young people we help to educate.

We embrace learner variability so that all our learners can develop and thrive in a culture of equal opportunities for learning, personal growth, and develop the ability to make positive change.

The IB commits to act supportively and with consideration for young people affected by difficult or adverse circumstances, their own changing personal histories or contexts, or other challenges affecting their lives as IB students.

We will continue our work to include the voices, perspectives, and leadership of all people, regardless of background. We will be transparent in all our policies relating to the people we work with and as we work with our educational programmes and resources.

We will explore new ways to open our programmes and our work to new languages, cultures, and contexts.

The IB commits to being fully focused on the needs of our staff, IB World Schools and their educators and students, as we challenge ourselves to embrace differing perspectives and be a more open and accepting organization, standing against prejudice and discrimination, wherever we can.

Our commitment

We recognize there is still work to do to ensure we are living up to these values. Whether that is through evolving our curriculum to reflect thinking and ideas from around the world, deepening our understanding on the role of language for cultural identity, or developing courses and curriculum, which all students can engage with; our journey begins with listening, learning, and a commitment to fairness and international mindedness.

We recognize that this journey is ongoing—one we must navigate alongside schools and the broader community. By fostering open dialogue, embracing a range of perspectives, and continuously challenging ourselves to do better, we reaffirm our commitment to building an educational environment where all students belong, one that is truly reflective of the world we serve.