IB Middle Years Programme Sciences: Syllabus Guide

This guide covers the full framework of IB Middle Years Programme Sciences, from 2014. It complements the subject overview and the assessment revision notes already on the site by setting out the course models schools choose between and the four assessment criteria used to judge student work – the actual structure of the subject, not just its aims.

The MYP requires at least 50 hours of teaching time for sciences in each year of the programme, rising to a recommended 70 hours of guided learning per year in MYP years 4 and 5 for students pursuing MYP eAssessment.

Course models: discrete, modular or integrated

Schools may structure the five years of MYP sciences differently, and this is a genuine school-level choice, not a fixed feature of the subject. Discrete sciences courses typically encompass biology, chemistry and physics as separately taught subjects, but may include other disciplines such as environmental sciences, life sciences or physical sciences. Modular sciences courses teach two or more discrete sciences in rotation across the year. Integrated sciences courses blend disciplines together rather than teaching them as separate strands. Because these models can produce quite different day-to-day timetables, confirm which model your own school actually uses before assuming your MYP sciences experience matches a description written for a different structure – a student on a modular timetable revising as though their course were fully integrated (or vice versa) risks organising study time around the wrong unit boundaries.

Key and related concepts

The framework is organised around key concepts of change, relationships and systems, explored through related concepts such as energy, movement, transformation and models – with schools free to identify further related concepts to meet local circumstances. As in every MYP subject group, students explore these through the same six global contexts – identities and relationships, orientation in space and time, personal and cultural expression, scientific and technical innovation, globalization and sustainability, and fairness and development.

The four assessment criteria

• Criterion A: Knowing and understanding – developing scientific knowledge (facts, ideas, concepts, processes, laws, principles, models and theories) and applying it to solve problems and express scientifically supported judgments.
• Criterion B: Inquiring and designing – developing intellectual and practical skills through designing, analysing and performing scientific investigations.
• Criterion C: Processing and evaluating – collecting, processing and interpreting qualitative and/or quantitative data, and explaining conclusions appropriately reached from it.
• Criterion D: Reflecting on the impacts of science – evaluating the implications of scientific developments and their applications to a specific problem or issue, using varied scientific language and properly documenting the work of others.

Each criterion carries equal weight and is scored on eight achievement levels (1-8), grouped into four descriptor bands – the same level-and-band structure used across every MYP subject group, applied here to genuinely practical, investigation-heavy scientific work rather than to written coursework alone. This “1-8” describes the four descriptor bands; the MYP subject-group guide additionally recognises a level of 0 below the lowest band, awarded when work does not reach the standard described by level 1 – so a single criterion’s actual attainable range is 0-8, and the four-criterion subject total is 0-32, not 4-32.

MYP eAssessment

Students seeking IB MYP course results or the MYP certificate complete an end-of-course on-screen examination – available specifically in biology, chemistry, physics and integrated sciences – made up of three tasks:

• Knowing and understanding (criterion A, 25 marks).
• Investigation skills (criteria B and C, 50 marks) – the largest of the three tasks by a clear margin, possibly involving a single investigation or several discrete scenarios, requiring students to formulate hypotheses, plan investigations, and collect, present, interpret and evaluate data.
• Applying science (criterion D, 25 marks) – reflecting on the impact of science and explaining how it addresses real-life issues.

Topics the on-screen examinations may draw on include atomic structure and bonding, cells, cycles, electromagnetism, evolution, interactions between organisms, forces, states and properties of matter, metabolism, organisms, and waves – spanning biology, chemistry and physics content. That breadth reflects the eAssessment being available in biology, chemistry, physics and integrated sciences as parallel options, each drawing on the same underlying framework rather than four unrelated syllabuses. Which topics a student’s own examination covers is set by the option they are entered for, not by the course model (discrete, modular or integrated) their school followed.

How to approach it

Because the investigation-skills task carries fully half the available marks (50 of 100), fluency in designing, running and evaluating your own investigations deserves proportionately more revision time than content recall alone – a student who knows the facts but has not practised formulating a testable hypothesis and interpreting real, imperfect data under exam conditions is under-prepared for where most of the marks actually sit. Because the scope of the on-screen examination is set by your eAssessment option rather than by how your own school structured its teaching (discrete, modular or integrated), do not assume that only the content taught in your most recent modular block is examinable – revision needs to span everything within your option’s scope, whenever it was taught. For the reflecting-on-impacts task, practise linking specific scientific content to genuine real-world issues and properly acknowledging sources, since this criterion explicitly rewards documented, evaluative thinking about science’s implications, not just accurate scientific description.

With inquiry at its core, the wider MYP sciences framework is designed to guide students toward independently and collaboratively investigating real issues through research, observation and experimentation – rather than treating scientific method as a memorised procedure recited once and then set aside, it is meant to be the working practice students actually use across every unit, regardless of discipline or course model.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Sciences, from 2014, © 2015.