International Baccalaureate Programme in Perm Region (Russia) as a Government Initiative: First Results

Abstract

International Baccalaureate Diploma Program is an academically challenging self-funded high school program which is recognized by the world’s leading universities. It was introduced in one of the regions of Russia (Permskii krai) by the local government with the aim to ensure access to high quality education and to improve regional educational system overall. High school students get international IB diploma while this process is largely financed by the regional government. The aim of this paper is to examine how effective this scheme is and to give recommendations for its improvement.In order to answer the research question different major stakeholder groups were surveyed: students, school-leavers, and teachers. Official documents, underlying the implementation of this program, were analyzed. Analysis of the findings was made with the help of institutional approach.The results of this paper represent benefits and shortcomings for each stakeholder group of the project. The recommendations given in the paper deal with the increase of efficiency of this scheme: additional incentives should be created and introduced to increase benefits for the regional part of the contract.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p527