Curriculum, learning and teaching
How do studentathletes balance sport and education? Anne Louise Williams reports... Louis Tee Jun Jie (above) is a talented golfer residing in Singapore who faced the dilemma many young talented athletes face: sacrifice sport or academic studies when completing the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP). Louis was fortunate to be offered support by Singapore Sports School, the IB and World Academy of Sport (WAoS) which enabled him to undertake the DP over 3 years instead of the usual 2 years. He graduated with the DP in January 2019 and commented: ‘The extended DP offered me the time during the day to both catch up on my studies and go for golf training. Had I taken the standard two-year course, I would have had to give up on my sport in order to do well academically due to the rigorous nature of the DP’. Singapore Sports School celebrated its first group of extended study (3 year) graduates in January 2019, with Louis scoring 43 out of a possible 45 points in the DP. He is one of many student-athletes across IB World Schools who now benefit from the project established by the IB and WAoS to address this question of how high performing student-athletes can better balance their commitments to both sport and education. The pilot project commenced in 2015, with interested schools being assessed by WAoS as to their ability to service the needs of high-performing studentathletes. Successful schools were provided with accreditation as a WAoS ‘Athlete Friendly Education Centre’ (AFEC) and subsequently allowed to offer student-athletes the possibility Winter
Summer |
| 2019
of undertaking an extended period of study and accessing flexible approaches to study. This initiative has allowed schools to maintain an individualised learning approach based on student need at the school level for those students who meet the criteria of a high-performing student-athlete, rather than a centrally prescribed delivery structure. In 2018, research was conducted which involved three complementary surveys being developed for DP Coordinators, Heads of Sport and student-athletes attending schools that were participating in the pilot. The results of this research provided vital evidence for the WAoS International Advisory Board and the IB leadership team to inform the approval process of the project which was announced in October 2018. IB World Schools can now continue to assist student-athletes through providing flexible delivery of the DP by gaining AFEC accreditation for those schools and student-athletes who fulfil the respective criteria. Key findings from the research have now been compiled into a research report distributed to AFEC-accredited schools which can provide greater insight to further assist schools in the delivery of flexible options for student-athletes. Some findings from the report are outlined here. Student-athletes The pilot project increased access to the DP for studentathletes such as Louis who would otherwise have chosen a
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