CP Core components updates

The new CP core components will be launched in February 2025 for first teaching in August 2025. First assessment will take place in May 2027.

Below you will find an overview of the updates. For more details, read the CP Core components subject brief.

For more information on the CP, visit the CP curriculum page.

The CP Core consists of four components: Personal and professional skills, language and cultural studies (previously language development), community engagement (previously service learning), and the reflective project.

General description of the updated components and teaching format  

Personal and professional skills course

Personal and professional skills (PPS) is a compulsory component of the CP. Through inquiry, students will:

• develop and apply transversal skills in a wide range of contexts
• explore and understand a variety of concepts related to one’s own personal and professional development
• consider, understand and value diverse perspectives
• become reflexive lifelong learners who can influence, manage and respond to change.

Language and cultural studies

The language and cultural studies (LCS) component invites students to better understand and expand their own linguistic and cultural repertoires and imagine how they could further engage with a range of linguistic and cultural groups. As partners in inquiry, students and teachers explore their linguistic and cultural repertoires and reflect on them in the context of local and global communities.

Community engagement

The community engagement (CE) component offers opportunities for students to learn in, from and with communities and to apply knowledge and skills acquired in other learning areas.

CE invites students to situate themselves in the context of community and to identify, explore and understand issues that are relevant to them and their communities—and that they can respond to through engagement in and with communities.

Reflective project

The reflective project (RP) is an independent body of work focused on the exploration of an ethical dilemma in a career-related area. It is developed and reflected upon over an extended period of time and, as a product of students’ own initiatives, provides a thoughtful representation of their cumulative personal experience, knowledge and skills gained over the course of the CP. Students have the option to develop their reflective project using a variety of formats including written, verbal, visual and audio-visual modes of communication.

How this curriculum review meets the needs of the current teaching landscape

Personal and professional skills course

The PPS course enables students to develop and apply a range of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, critical and ethical thinking, and intercultural understanding through inquiry-based learning engagements.

The course connects and deepens the learning and skills developed in the other CP Core components and programme elements, preparing students for their future pathways in higher education, further training or employment.

Language and cultural studies

LCS fosters conceptual understanding by enabling students to engage in inquiry and consider broad questions about language, culture, identity, meaning and their interrelationships.

The interests and experiences of students are central to LCS. This core component aims to foster student agency by enabling students to set relevant goals that reflect their personal, academic and professional needs and aspirations.

Community engagement

The learning and engagement process in CE is grounded in inquiry-based learning, place-based learning and action-oriented pedagogies. It aims for students to:

• build relationships and engage in reciprocal collaborations that contribute to individual and collective well-being
• develop awareness of complexity and appreciation for the diversity of ways of knowing, doing and being
• cultivate compassionate integrity, ethical solidarity, and active hope
• embrace reflective and reflexive practice as tools for building a cognitive and affective foundation that supports lifelong learning and global citizenship.

Reflective project

The reflective project provides students with the opportunity to think like a future career practitioner. It promotes in-depth and critical research, reflection and reflexivity, professional communication skills, intellectual discovery, and creativity through the exploration of a career-related dilemma while considering the impact and perspectives of others through current, historical, local and global contexts.

Practically, the aims of the reflective project enable students to:

• engage in personal inquiry
• develop critical thinking and research skills to explore an ethical dilemma
• seek and appreciate local and/or global perspectives
• appraise the reliability and bias of resources found during the research process
• develop effective communication skills by creating a structured, coherent, and balanced argument
• develop self-management skills to support the research, writing and product creation process
• engage in ongoing reflective practice to arrive at a personal position.

Course content changes

Personal and professional skills course

PPS has a renewed emphasis on the development of transversal skills in a variety of personal and professional contexts and is structured around inquiry. Enhancements include the following changes:

• Skill domains reflect the previous themes and are expanded to match research on future-facing skills.
• Themes are broadened to six concepts: Change, Connections, Identities, Perspectives, Systems, Well-being.
• Skill development takes place through inquiry in multiple contexts (personal, professional, formal and informal learning).

Language and cultural studies

Language and cultural studies replaces the former core component of “language development” and now emphasizes a personalized learner journey that:

• focuses on exploring and expanding linguistic and cultural repertoires
• offers a syllabus structure that emphasizesinquiry over proficiency, balances structure and flexibility, and supports the development of conceptual understanding.

An introductory unit has been introduced to lay the foundations for students to identify a focus for learning in the component.

Implementation requirements have also been revised, including the expansion of recommended total learning hours and the introduction of required guided time.

Community engagement

This component has been revised to enhance the learning and engagement processes, rooted in inquiry-driven, place-based and action-oriented pedagogy. It previously was referred to as “service learning”.

There is also a greater focus on relationality, systems thinking, critical reflection and reflexivity, ethics.

Implementation requirements have also been updated, including the introduction of required guided time.

Reflective project

The RP has been revised to:

• expand connections to careers beyond the one career-related study course a student undertakes as part of the CP
• enhance the student’s learning journey with clear phases that include feedback loops (including peer feedback)
• incorporate a learning journal to improve authentic reflective practice
• demonstrate real world relevance with new optional formats such as a podcast
• include a presentation and viva voceto expand oral communication skills and provide additional opportunities for feedback and reflection.

Supervisors support students through a minimum of three and maximum of six guided hours.

Changes to assessment

Personal and professional skills course

Achievement of the learning outcomes is demonstrated through a student-curated portfolio. Schools use the portfolio to evidence course completion.

Language and cultural studies

While course completion remains the same, requiring students to have sustained engagement and demonstrate progress in their learning, the assessment model has been enhanced by introducing the following items:

• A student learning journal to record sustained engagement and evidence of learning
• Three review points with a progress and reflection form for each review point

Community engagement

The review has emphasized ongoing assessment through authentic and manageable methods: 

• A student learning journal which both supports and documents their learning journey and personal development
• Three review points supported by a narrative assessment approach

Reflective project

The main change in assessment is that the reflective project will be externally assessed; therefore, the final project and reflection are submitted to the IB for assessment.

Also, the current RPPF has been revised to a more holistic reflection form (up to 1000 words)

There have also been revisions to the assessment criteria and the mark allocation has been more evenly distributed.