The Middle Years Programme (MYP) is one of four programmes offered by the International Baccalaureate (IB), designed for students aged 11 to 16 (typically Grades 6 through 10). Rather than prescribing a fixed syllabus, MYP provides a framework that schools use to design their own curriculum around a shared set of principles: conceptual understanding, connection to the real world, and the development of the whole student.

How MYP is organized

MYP curriculum is organized into eight subject groups: Language and Literature, Language Acquisition, Individuals and Societies, Sciences, Mathematics, Arts, Physical and Health Education, and Design. In the final two years of the programme, schools may offer a reduced set of subjects to allow for greater depth.

Every subject group is taught through the same underlying structure: a key concept (a broad, transferable idea like Change, Systems, or Communities), one or more related concepts specific to the subject, and a global context that situates the unit in a real-world frame such as Identities and Relationships or Globalization and Sustainability.

What makes MYP different

Three features distinguish MYP from a traditional, content-first curriculum:

  • Concept-driven, not just content-driven: students are expected to transfer understanding across contexts, not just recall facts.
  • Criterion-based assessment: students are assessed against fixed achievement-level descriptors for each subject, not ranked against each other.
  • The Personal Project: in the final year, students independently plan, execute, and reflect on a self-chosen project, demonstrating the Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills built up over the programme.

Where to go next

If MYP is new to you, the next logical step is to read about the MYP Philosophy and the IB Learner Profile, both of which explain the values underpinning the structure described here.