Riga State Gymnasium #1 and the IB Diploma Programme

[astiob]

First of all, a very short disclaimer: not all of this applies to all teachers/subjects/whatever-else-appropriate. Bonus information: this list was started a long time ago.

1. Only a handful of subjects are taught in English, and even then it is intermixed with Latvian. (The only subject I know to be taught entirely in English is English.) In fact, some teachers do not even understand English or understand it poorly.
2. All students are required to take Latvian A1 at HL. We are so totally all going to be philologists! Especially given that the school is mathematics-oriented. This requirement decreases our ability to put effort on other subjects, decreases our final grades (a single grade may make a crucial difference when you have a conditional offer from a world-top university!) and precludes us from taking another HL subject that we would like to take, since the IB allows no more than four HL subjects on the diploma.
3. Students whose mother tongue is not Latvian are required to take Latvian A1 HL too.
4. The date by which we have to give in all internally assessed works is determined by the date our Diploma Coordinator flies to America to visit her relatives. During our second year, she decided to fly one week earlier than usually, so we had less time to complete our IA. Moreover, because of the placement of spring (school) holidays, we in fact had more than a week less time than we would have if she flew a week later.
5. Virtually no information is disclosed to the students. We are not told about any schedules and deadlines, we are not told ToK essay topics in advance, we are not told almost anything about the programme itself and our rights and obligations. When we do get information, we get it in the last moment and only as a result of our own efforts. Consider this example: after we have never been told a word about the deadline for the externally assessed works in Latvian, our Diploma Programme Coordinator comes and tells me that I had to give them in not later than that day; when I say I do not have them with me and I still have to finish them, she comes down on me and says I am virtually screwed, because she is posting the works to the examiner the morning after the next day. o.O
6. We are never told what ToK is; we have to deduce it by ourselves. This would be OK if we did not spend the whole first semester or even year thinking ToK is pure ravings of a madman without any meaning whatsoever.
7. No group 6 subject is offered and only four group 3 and three group 4 subjects are offered, which is a shame. It is possible to take additional group 3 or group 6 subjects if we find teachers on our own, but the correspondence of the resulting teaching to what the IB expects is questionable.
8. (Continuing the topic.) New teachers are allowed to teach IB classes without any preparation. Moreover, even teachers who have just entered the school for the first time are allowed to do so.
9. Business & Management is only offered to every second class. (The school accepts one IB class per year.) Further Mathematics is offered if the students explicitly ask for it, but even then only for self-study.
10. Teachers seem to read formal IB documents, including syllabuses, inattentively and rarely, and some seem to have never read them. They tell us information that does not conform to formal documents, mark our work in ways that do not conform to formal documents and often tell us that they have learnt all that from teacher conferences/whatever organized by the IB. Perhaps a problem with the IB’s own processes is coming to light here? At least one teacher marks works during the course absolutely subjectively, clearly not using the criteria during marking (although she does refer us to them), and when we point out that the criteria do not agree with her marks, she makes the dubious claim that the criteria are not that important, insisting that obvious (to her) rules are obvious and even though no criterion even remotely resembles them, failure to obey to them necessarily results in a huge mark loss. She also says that completing all requirements in an exam (to the maximum extent permitted by the syllabus) can only ever lead to a solid six, but even her standards for a solid six seem to be exaggerated. To one of our three B&M students, she told she would put him an F in Internal Assessment just because ‘it was not a report but an essay’. On the other hand, the student claimed his report/essay complied to the criteria. Her only reply to this claim was, ‘What criteria?! It’s nowhere near any criterion!’
11. Deadlines are very poorly placed and enforced, leading to almost all externally and internally assessed written work piling up until the February of the second year.