What is Primary Years Programme (PYP)?
The PYP is an authentic inquiry-based learning and teaching programme that is engaging, significant, challenging and relevant. It is part of the IB program.
The programme offers an inquiry-based and concept-driven transdisciplinary model of learning and teaching, supported by a strong understanding of how students learn.
Students also demonstrate the agility and imagination to respond to new and unexpected challenges and opportunities and to take action for a better and more peaceful world.
Schools who choose to implement the PYP will develop students’ academic, social and emotional wellbeing, focusing on international-mindedness and a sense of belonging to local and global communities. The PYP nurtures independent and collaborative learners, encouraging every student to have voice, choice and ownership in their own learning.
The PYP curriculum framework
The Primary Years Programme curriculum framework begins with the premise that students are agents of their own learning and partners in the learning process. It prioritizes people and their relationships to build a strong learning community.
PYP students use their initiative to take responsibility and ownership of their learning. By learning through inquiry and reflecting on their own learning, PYP students develop knowledge, conceptual understandings, skills and the attributes of the IB Learner profile to make a difference in their own lives, their communities, and beyond.
Why offer the PYP ?
The PYP focuses on the development of the whole child as an inquirer, both in school and in the world beyond. The PYP offers a transformative experience for students, teachers and whole school communities and delivers excellent outcomes by providing an education that is engaging, relevant, challenging and significant.
PYP learners know how to take ownership of their learning, collaborating with teachers to deepen understanding and increase their confidence and self-motivation. Through actively engaging in integrated ongoing assessment, they become effective, self-regulated learners who can act on constructive feedback.
The Primary Years Programme (PYP) offers a transdisciplinary, inquiry-based and student-centered education with responsible action at its core, enabling students to learn between, across and beyond traditional subject boundaries.
The framework serves as the curriculum organizer and offers an in-depth guide to achieve authentic conceptual inquiry-based learning that is engaging, significant, challenging and relevant for PYP students.
Through the programme of inquiry and by reflecting on their learning, PYP students develop knowledge, conceptual understandings, skills and the attributes of the IB Learner profile. Informed by constructivist and social-constructivist learning theories, the emphasis on collaborative inquiry and integrative learning honours the curiosity, voice, and contribution of the students.
Guided by six transdisciplinary themes of global significance, students broaden their learning by developing their conceptual understandings, strengthening their knowledge and skills across, between and beyond subject areas.
The pillars of the PYP curriculum framework
The transdisciplinary model extends across all three pillars of the PYP curriculum framework—the learner, learning and teaching, and the learning community.
- The learner: describes the outcomes for individual students and the outcomes they seek for themselves (what is learning?)
- Learning and teaching: articulates the distinctive features of learning and teaching (how best to support learners?)
- The learning community: emphasizes the importance of the social outcomes of learning and the role that IB communities play in achieving these outcomes (who facilitates learning and teaching?)
Implementing the PYP in schools
The whole school benefits from using the PYP curriculum framework to organize their curriculum and community. In addition, the Programme Standards and Practice (PSP) framework supports schools with implementing and developing the PYP.
The PSP helps develop the environment, culture, policies and processes that support effective practice and exemplify the IB mission.