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 Educational Review

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedr20

The influx of International Baccalaureate (IB)

programmes into local education systems in Hong
Kong, Singapore, and South Korea

Moosung Lee, Hyejin Kim & Ewan Wright

To cite this article: Moosung Lee, Hyejin Kim & Ewan Wright (2021): The influx of International
Baccalaureate (IB) programmes into local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South
Korea, Educational Review, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2021.1891023

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EDUCATIONAL REVIEW
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1891023

The influx of International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes

into local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and
South Korea
Moosung Leea,b, Hyejin Kimc and Ewan Wright d

a
Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia; bDepartment of Education, Yonsei
University, Seoul, Korea; cDepartment of Political Science and Global Studies, National University of
Singapore, Singapore; dDepartment of Education Policy and Leadership, Education University of Hong Kong,
Tai Po, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This comparative analysis aims to capture the complex roles and Received 12 September 2020
positionings of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in conjunction Accepted 2 February 2021
with local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South KEYWORDS
Korea. Our analysis focused on how the IB’s institutional legitimacy International Baccalaureate
is presented in the three societies. We conducted a documentary (IB); local education systems;
analysis of texts on the introduction and implementation of IB institutionalisation;
programmes into local school systems. Our findings suggest that legitimacy; comparative
there are commonalities and variations in how the IB is interpreted analysis
by key local agents and is positioned into local education systems.
Specifically, across the three societies, the IB has expanded con-
tinuously. At the same time, its institutionalisation process varies by
each society’s socio-historical context and needs: substantive legiti-
macy as the international curriculum of choice in Hong Kong,
a quiet supplement to elite education in Singapore, and instrumen-
tal curriculum borrowing for fixing the education system in Korea.
We also find that the institutionalisation of the IB is limited at
a symbolic level and controlled by the Singaporean government,
while the IB is saliently promoted by local education authorities in
the context of education reform in Korea. The institutionalisation
process of the IB in Hong Kong is primarily swayed by market
principles under the existing school choice system.

Introduction
The International Baccalaureate (IB) has emerged as a major player in education systems
amid a fivefold increase in international schools between 2000 and 2020 worldwide
(11,500 international schools and 5.8 million students as of 2020). In particular, Asia
Pacific has evidenced the fastest growth in schools offering IB programmes (121 IB
schools in 2000 to 1,029 schools by 2020). The primary driver stems from deregulatory
policies of international schooling by nation-states (or jurisdictions) (H. Kim, 2016; Lee &
Wright, 2015). Historically, most governments in the region heavily regulated interna-
tional schooling by prohibiting local students from enrolling in the sector and imposing

CONTACT Moosung Lee leemoosung@gmail.com Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, Canberra,

Australia; Department of Education, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
© 2021 Educational Review
2 M. LEE ET AL.

legal hurdles to restrict the establishment of international schools (Kim & Mobrand, 2019;
Lee & Wright, 2015). With the inception of deregulatory policies, non-local educational
providers such as the IB have capitalised on the development of a rapidly emerging
international school market, which Machin (2017) depicted as the “international school
gold rush” (p. 131). On the one hand, the IB is found to act as a chaperone for further
privatisation reinforced by the influx of transnational education corporates (H. Kim, 2016).
Consequently, the growth of IB schools appears to create additional educational stratifi-
cation within national education systems (Lee et al., 2016). On the other hand, the IB aims
to provide students with rigorous academic curricula together with the facilitation of
cosmopolitan values such as intercultural understanding (Tarc, 2009; Wright & Lee,
2014a). In other words, the expansion of the IB in the Asia Pacific is at the heart of
tensions between the privatisation and internationalisation of education.
Within this context, this study explores the motivations, justifications, and interpreta-
tions of key local agents (e.g. governments, policymakers, local agents) involved in the
implementation of IB programmes or who are keen to introduce IB programmes into local
education systems. Taking a comparative perspective, this study focuses on three sys-
tems: Hong Kong (highly deregulated international schooling market coupled with local
schooling system), Singapore (conditionally deregulated international schooling market
separated from local schooling system), and South Korea (herein, Korea) (conditionally
deregulated international schooling market separated from local schooling system).
Empirical research on how IB programmes are interpreted and accepted by key stake-
holders of local education systems is thin on the ground. The existing studies, however, have
offered several explanations about how the IB has succeeded in creating institutional legiti-
macy of its programmes as a “brand” when introduced to local education systems. Research
suggests that IB brand recognition is primarily associated with the image of a validated
international curriculum for a multicultural student body who are globally mobile (Tarc,
2009). Evidence of this branding frequently appears in major international media – e.g. “a
global curriculum for a globalized era” (Shah, 2013). While the IB has succeeded in creating
such a symbolic image, different aspects of the IB brand are subscribed across different
contexts. For example, in the U.S. IB brand recognition is characterised mainly as college-
prep courses for academically talented students in schools (Gehring, 2001), including some
Title 1 high schools (Siskin et al., 2010). In Asia, the elitist image of the IB brand is more
recognised. For example, sending children to IB schools in Asia is a way for the global middle
class in the region to distinguish their social status (Koo, 2016; Wright & Lee, 2019). In addition,
the unique curriculum structure, such as core components of the International Baccalaureate
Diploma Programme (IBDP), representing liberal and progressive pedagogies, has gained
traction from parents and educators (Wright & Lee, 2014b, 2019). Across non-English speaking
societies, IB brand recognition is also rooted in the English-medium of instruction as cultural-
linguistic capital (V. Ng, 2012; Wright & Lee, 2019). The symbolic differences of the IB brand
have been further substantiated in the regard that IBDP schools tend to play the “university
admission game” well and provide a pathway to globally leading universities (Doherty, 2012;
Lee & Wright, 2016). In short, the IB brand recognition, producing such symbolic (and
substantive) differences, has been the core of the institutional legitimacy of the IB.
In this study, we intend to extend the emerging line of IB research by delving deeper
into commonalities and variations in how the IB is interpreted symbolically and is posi-
tioned substantively across Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea. We focus on exploring the
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 3

following research question: How have IB programmes been interpreted and positioned in
the local school systems of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea?

The contexts: IB in local schooling systems

In Hong Kong, Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools are the key players in adopting the IB
programmes into local schooling systems. The DSS, launched in 1991, is a government-
driven deregulatory policy that aims to enhance school choice in the local education
system by giving high-performing schools flexibility in curriculum, student admission, and
school fees while retaining government support through subsidies (Education Bureau
[EDB], 2020). The introduction of IB programmes by DSS schools has been discussed as
part of the marketisation and privatisation of education (Chang & McLaren, 2018). Bryant
et al. (2018) found that DSS schools adopted the IBDP to align with “missions of inter-
nationalization”. The IB can also be a class strategy to enhance English proficiency, gain
sanctuary from intense competition and examinations in mainstream education, and
attain an internationally validated qualification for higher education (M. Lee, 2019;
Wright & Lee, 2019). Yet V. Ng (2012) argued that local families in Hong Kong often prefer
sending their children to international schools offering the IB over DSS schools.
Nonetheless, there is a gap in research investigating the discursive constructs that under-
lie the rationale for local agents to introduce the IB programmes into local schools.
In the case of Singapore, the vast majority of IB programmes are offered by interna-
tional schools rather than by the local school system. Most discussion of the IB in
Singapore, therefore, relates to this international school scene (Morrissey et al., 2014).
Few studies have examined IB programmes in the context of public schools. In one of the
few pieces on the IB in the local school system, Loh (2012) reported that to pursue the aim
of international education in local schools authentically, certain subjects such as English in
the IB’s Diploma Programme (DP) need to be localised in terms of text choice and
educators should critically engage cosmopolitan literature in the curriculum.
In Korea, there are two local schools that have implemented the IBDP. Gyeonggi
Academy of Foreign Languages, as a local private school, was accredited as an IB school
in 2010. Recently, another local private school called Chungnam Samsung Academy has
been accredited as an IB school offering the DP from 2021. However, over the last two
years, there has been a rapid development of plans to expand IB programmes into local
schools as two major education authorities announced that they would introduce IB
programmes. Given that this is a new phenomenon, the idea of borrowing the IB
programmes as local school curricula has sparked heated policy debates. Only a few
studies have explored this process by looking into whether and how such curriculum
borrowing can fit into local education systems (Hong, 2019; Kang & Shin, 2020; Lee et al.,
2017; Wright & Lee, 2020). Although these studies contribute to discussions on how policy
discourses on curriculum borrowing have emerged, how the idea of curriculum borrow-
ing has been justified and institutionalised is not fully explicated.

Theoretical perspective
Our investigation is informed by the concept of institutionalisation. We view institutiona-
lisation as the process of becoming institutions. Under this conceptualisation, institutions
4 M. LEE ET AL.

are defined as social structures that are built on “symbolic elements, social activities, and
material resources” that interdependently shape institutional legitimacy (Scott, 2014, pp.
57–58). Equipped with the institutionalisation perspective, we examine how schools
adopting IB programmes as institutions are socially accepted by and promoted in local
schooling systems. In that process, we apply institutional legitimacy as our analytical
focus.
Since Weber’s (1947/2012) attention to the concept of legitimacy, institutionalists have
shed light on the social legitimacy of institutions (i.e. social acceptability and credibility)
by revealing how differential bases of institutional legitimacy (e.g. legal sanction, moral
governance, cognitive-cultural acceptance) work for the rise of various organisations
(Scott, 2014). In understanding the bases of institutional legitimacy, traditional institu-
tionalists focused on the regulatory and normative processes in moulding institutional
legitimacy, whereas neo-institutionalists emphasise cultural-cognitive dimensions. For
example, from the cultural-cognitive perspective, Meyer and Rowan (1977) viewed insti-
tutions as a complex system of cultural rules. They further pointed out that constructing
institutional legitimacy is achieved through rationalisation of cultural rules (through
rituals, routines, and symbols). In line with this perspective, Meyer and Rowan depicted
the institutional structure of public schools as largely symbolic rather than regulative. This
neo-institutionalist perspective has strength in explaining why organisations of the same
type across different parts of the world resemble one another structurally and why certain
norms prevail within and between organisations in an organisational field (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1983). Equipped with these institutionalist perspectives, we explore how the IB’s
institutional legitimacy is presented.

Methods
We conducted documentary analysis of policy and media documents in Hong Kong,
Singapore, and Korea. This qualitative approach involved reviewing, examining, and
interpreting policy-oriented texts and media coverage. The objective was to illuminate
the discursive constructs (i.e. motivations and justifications) of local agents for introducing
and implementing IB programmes into local education systems. We sampled documents
in a systematic way by keeping records of sources searched, maintaining inclusionary and
exclusionary criteria for sampling the documents, and keeping a standardised analytical
approach (Frey, 2018).
First, the sources were narrowed down to publicly available official government docu-
ments, transcripts of government proceedings, and media reports. The criteria for inclu-
sion were documents published within the last 15 years, by local outlets (e.g. not
international media), and with a substantive focus on the IB in local education systems.
In addition, background information was gathered from IB reports, school websites and
research published in academic journals. Second, to search for relevant documents,
a selection of keywords was agreed upon by the research team, which were continuously
reviewed and revised based on emerging insights. Examples of keywords included:
“International Baccalaureate”, “education reform”, “local education system”. Following
this, documents were gathered from government websites (e.g. Legislative Council’s
Hansard database in Hong Kong), major media outlets (e.g. The Straits Times in
Singapore), local media (e.g. Jejusory News in Korea), and education specialised news
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 5

media (e.g. Eduin News in Korea) using the search tool on websites. Third, the content of
the documents was qualitatively analysed: we read each text to identify significant or
reoccurring themes in the texts. This process was partially inductive by deriving patterns
from the data, but was also informed by the extant literature, conceptual framework, and
the research question. The identified themes were then compared to explore discursive
constructs of IB programmes by local agents across the three societies.
Based on documentary analysis of each society, we compared the findings from the
three societies. For this comparative analysis, we adopted Bartlett and Vavrus’s (2017) idea
of “horizontal axis” in comparing how certain processes unfold across the cases. Bartlett
and Vavrus conceptualise the horizontal axis as a comparative lens that “not only
contrasts one case with another, but also traces social actors, documents, or other
influences across these cases” (p. 14). More specifically, the horizonal perspective “com-
pares how similar policies or phenomena unfold in locations” (p. 15). In applying the
horizonal axis, we attempt to demonstrate events and processes in a historical context.

The Hong Kong case: legitimacy as the international curriculum of choice

The IB was first offered in Hong Kong in 1988 by the French International School. In 1991,
Chinese International School and Li Po Chun United World College introduced IB pro-
grammes. It was not until the mid-2000s, however, that the IB began to expand and
establish legitimacy as the international curriculum of choice. In the May 2006 examina-
tion session, 451 students took IBDP examinations (IB, 2006), compared with 2,260 in
May 2019 (IB, 2019). By 2020, there were 67 IB schools across Hong Kong offering IB
programmes, including 34 DP schools, which is considerably higher than Singapore and
Korea (IB, 2021) (see Table 1).
Most IB programmes are provided by international schools that serve mobile expatri-
ates and local families seeking an alternative to local schools. Almost one-third of IB
schools are international schools under the English Schools Foundation (ESF) that was
established in the colonial era to provide a subsidised British curriculum for English-
speaking families. ESF began to switch to the IB from the early 2000s in a changing
political climate of weakening ties with Britain (Yamato & Bray, 2002) and the removal of
government subsidies from 2013 (Zhao, 2013). Another group of IB schools are private
international schools affiliated with overseas education systems (e.g. Australian
International School) or are independent (e.g. The Independent Schools Foundation
Academy). Significantly for this article, nine local schools provide the IBDP under the
Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) (IB, 2021). These schools are mostly elite English medium
schools that serve local upper-middle-class families. They are highly regarded owing to

Table 1. IB schools in Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea.

Primary Years Middle Years Diploma
IB Programme Programme Programme Diploma Programme Diploma Programme
Location schools schools schools schools candidates (May 2010) candidates (May 2019)
Hong Kong 67 40 15 34 451 2,260
Singapore 37 20 8 28 413 1,543
Korea 17 11 9 13 126 582
6 M. LEE ET AL.

the cultural capital of English language proficiency and a track record of sending students
to elite universities (Lam et al., 2019; Wong & Kwan, 2019).
DSS schools began to introduce IB programmes from the mid-to-late-2000s. In
a deregulated education market, these schools provide a “middle way” in the education
market between international schools and the national curriculum at local schools.
Notably, the DSS schools offering IB programmes were among the most prestigious and
well-equipped in Hong Kong, including Diocesan Boys’ School, St. Paul’s Co-educational
College, and St Stephen’s College. The introduction of the IB at these elite schools likely
owed to the significant resources required for programme accreditation and implementa-
tion. As of 2020, it costs approximately 34,000 USD for a school to be accredited as an IB
school. Even after accreditation, operating one programme alone, such as the IBDP costs
9,300 USD per year. These costs do not include fees for external examinations and
teachers’ professional training operated by the IB.
The decision by elite DSS schools to offer the IB rather than other international
curriculums reflected the institutional legitimacy of the IB as the international curriculum
of choice in Hong Kong among policymakers, school leaders, and the media. The IB has
become institutionally accepted as a high-quality education that is internationally vali-
dated and prepares students to thrive in higher education, especially at the DP level. The
programmes developed a cachet in the Hong Kong context, which was reinforced by first
being offered by exclusive private international schools. This trend was met with an
increasing number of affluent local parents sending their children to IB international
schools (Wright & Lee, 2019). The legitimacy of the IB is demonstrated through three
examples.
First, the IB has become a symbol of a pedagogically progressive education that offers
an alternative to the perceived deficiencies of the local education system. In the
Legislative Council, policymakers have described the IB as a “flexible and inspiring
curriculum” that should be expanded in local schools, given that it contrasted with
a pressurised, exam-oriented, and “spoon-feeding” national curriculum (Legislative
Council, 2019, p. 2429). Second, the influx of the IB into DSS schools was positioned as
part of a global trend. As the Principal of Creative Secondary School at the time explained:
“Many state education systems across the world welcome the presence of IB programmes
within their schools. Hong Kong is but the latest to join this world trend” (Yau, 2010, n.p.).
Third, local media have reinforced the IB’s legitimacy in Hong Kong. Media reports
frequently portray the IB as a distinctively well-rounded education that prepares young
people to thrive in higher education (e.g. Rowen, 2017). Indeed, IB examination results are
considered newsworthy events that typically celebrate how IB schools in Hong Kong
outperformed the global average and the number of students who attained full marks
(e.g. Gurung & Law, 2018).
From the late 2000s, IB DSS schools introduced a distinctive “dual curricula” system
where the IB and local curriculums are run concurrently. At Creative Secondary Schools,
students complete a curriculum delivered through the pedagogical framework of the IB’s
Middle Years Programme (MYP) before having an option to enter the DP or the Hong Kong
Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE). Most other IB DSS schools follow the Hong Kong
national curriculum before introducing a “dual curriculum” at the DP level. The policy
initiative was again justified by enhancing school choice. The principal of St. Paul’s Co-
educational College explained that the policy met the learning needs of different types of
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 7

students within the same school: “We believe this arrangement enables us to better cater
to our diverse student body, which encompasses a broad array of talents and interests, and
different learning styles” (Young, 2017, n.p.). More specifically, the IB was positioned as
a curriculum of choice for “brighter students”, as the principal Evangelical Lutheran Church
of Hong Kong noted: “While the majority of local students would take local examinations,
brighter students would be given the option of taking the IB” (Clem, 2005, n.p.).
The “dual curriculum” system adds complexity to educational stratification in
Hong Kong. DSS schools have been criticised as elitist due to high tuition fees and
exclusionary admissions processes (Lam et al., 2019; Wong & Kwan, 2019), although the
tuition fees are typically lower than international schools. The separation of IB and HKDSE
students within DSS schools represents a further layer of stratification. Significantly, the
DP tuition fees for local students are considerably higher than for the HKDSE in the same
schools (see Appendix A). As one example, St Paul’s Co-educational College charges
annual tuition fees of 18,165 USD for students taking the HKDSE compared with 22,294
USD for students taking the IBDP. The IB requires high levels of English-language profi-
ciency, which could be an additional barrier for some students. Also, an industry for “high
end” private supplementary tutoring for the IB has rapidly developed to help the children
of affluent parents achieve high grades for university admission. In these respects, the IB is
not only situated at the high-end of the local education system but has legitimacy as
a premium education curriculum even within elite local schools. The results have been
impressive: two of the top three IB schools worldwide in terms of average scores in 2020
were DSS schools (Diocesan Boys’ School and St Paul’s Co-educational College), whereas
the other school was Singapore’s Anglo Chinese school (IB-schools.com, 2020).
Local IB students may, therefore, be separated from their non-IB peers within the same
school. They will experience different curriculums, which may involve different pedago-
gical approaches, assessments, and even post-graduation pathways. The advantages
offered to local IB students over other local students in university admission has attracted
media attention. There are high levels of competition to access higher education in
Hong Kong, owing to an annual cap of 15,000 subsidised first year first-degree university
places that covers around 20% of the age cohort (S. Y. Lee, 2016). Despite local IB students
representing a small proportion of students in Hong Kong’s higher education system, they
have been found to be over-represented at elite local universities and degree pro-
grammes (e.g. Hui & Yap, 2018). For example, local students who took the DP at
a school in Hong Kong accounted for 6% of newly enrolled students at the University of
Hong Kong in 2017/18 (Government of Hong Kong, 2018).
In sum, the introduction of the IB into DSS schools in Hong Kong was part of a state-
driven deregulatory policy to enhance school choice. The IB gained legitimacy as the
international curriculum of choice for DSS schools among policymakers, school leaders,
and the media by symbolising high status, progressive pedagogy, and recognition from
universities worldwide. At the same time, the “dual curriculum” feature of the IB in DSS
schools adds a further layer of stratification in the education system.

The Singaporean case: a quiet supplement to elite education

In Singapore, the IB is associated most with international schools and has only a short
history and limited adoption in the local school system. The IBDP can be found in
8 M. LEE ET AL.

a handful of local schools. While the IBDP is offered at elite local schools, neither media
nor the authorities give great attention to the programme. In Singapore, adoption of the
IB has been largely unrelated to public discourse on the IB.
There is a stark contrast between the noise made by international schools in Singapore
about the IB and the muted discussion of the IB in the local education system.
International schools have widely adopted the IB. Not only that, but the IB is a primary
means of marketing for schools. Schools are only too eager to tout the benefits of the IB,
which carries a legitimacy that families on an international circuit understand. IB accred-
itation is one of the first points mentioned by admissions officers; it is among the most
visible parts of promotional material. The commercial usage of the IB follows the profound
corporatisation that has occurred in the international school scene since the mid-2000s
(H. Kim, 2019). As schools shifted away from serving local communities to competing for
a wider pool of students, they turned to the IB as a way to market themselves. Globally
circulating ideas about the quality of IB education imbued the IB with legitimacy in
international schools. Shifting to become revenue-oriented institutions, these schools
found IB immensely helpful. Schools in Singapore’s local education system, even when
located just down the road, can be a world apart.
The relative quiet on the IB in Singapore needs to be understood in the context of the
complex relationship in the city-state between the IB, on one hand, and the privatisation
and internationalisation of schooling, on the other. The reason is that there are existing
notions of educational desirability and justice, and the IB enters not on a blank slate but
against that normative landscape. Two key features of Singapore’s education system are
that it is highly stratified and that it is constantly revised through borrowing from overseas
practice. Singapore’s education ministry has long overseen a sophisticated system of
stratification in schools. First, there is a hierarchy of schools. Many schools began as
private ventures, serving particular communities and some gained prestige for their
roles in educating leaders. The names of schools remain crucial in parent choices about
preferred schools. While schools were largely nationalised with independence in 1965,
these names continue to be important. Second, the streaming of students at an early age
formalises the education hierarchy. Examinations after Primary 6 (typically 12 years old)
determine the educational paths open to children. Students whose results did not put
them on an academic track have few methods of returning to it. Preparation for the
Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLEs) remains a central focus of elementary
education, as they set children’s future opportunities. Third, a section of local schools
was granted greater autonomy. In the 1980s, against the background of this stratification,
the government was concerned that the system did not create the diversity the future
required. In order to stimulate innovation and cultivate leadership, the government
introduced a system of independent schools. A number of prestigious state schools
were converted into independent schools, which created further divisions and stratifica-
tion within the local school system (J. Tan, 1993, p. 241). Fourth, the creation in 2004 of an
Integrated Program, in which strong-performing students could skip “O” levels, com-
pounded the significance of the PSLEs by cutting out ways back into the academic track:
students with average and lower PSLE scores would be more greatly differentiated from
their higher scoring classmates (Ho, 2012, p. 409).
The justification for this hierarchy is among the core public values in Singapore. The
system is said to foster a desirable “meritocracy”, in which opportunities are spread widely
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 9

so that talented individuals can realise their potential. Official narratives about meritoc-
racy are told to legitimise the education system. As these narratives are entrenched,
a separate legitimation of the IB is not espoused by education officials or educators. Public
discussion around the IB occurs within the symbolic landscape of meritocracy. The
institutional legitimacy of the IB is weak.
Given this sophisticated stratification in the school system, the IB does not enter as
a force that disrupts equality – because there is no pretence that such equality exists.
When schools promote themselves, the name of the school is often sufficient to suggest
prestige. The cut-off point on PSLE scores for admission is another marker. Offering the IB
is only one aspect. A student who goes to Anglo-Chinese Independent School would not
say, “I attend an IB school”; she would say “I study at Anglo-Chinese Independent School”.
In other words, a distinct narrative about the quality or desirability is unnecessary, or at
least secondary, in this environment. The IB in Singapore exists only within elite and
independent schools. All of these offer the Integrated Program. Anglo Chinese
Independent School, for example, introduced the Integrated Program in 2004 and the
next year became Singapore’s first local IB school. The school holds all three markers of
elite status: it is an independent school, has the Integrated Program, and offers the IBDP.
The Methodist “Girls” School, another old independent school, has only a primary and
secondary school (without a junior college), but students can follow the Integrated
Program and study for the IBDP at Anglo Chinese. St. Joseph’s Institution offers the
IBDP, while Hwa Chong Institution established a separate branch, called the Hwa Chong
International School, offering the IBDP from 2008. All of these schools are famous based
on their own reputations. Students in the IBDP have passed through PSLEs with high
marks and entered top independent schools with no need to sit for “O” levels. This fact
makes the IB exclusive. Some have argued that it is too exclusive (Davie, 2011). However,
at the same time, the IB is not publicly celebrated or held up as an aspiration in its own
right.
The limited attention that the IB has received portrays it as a solid alternative to the “A”
levels. St’s Joseph’s Institution explained its rationale for adopting the IB, with the
principal saying that “The IB is internationally recognized and provides more breadth
than the ‘A’ levels”. Even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made reference to the IB in the
2010 National Day Speech: “For students confident of making it to university, skip ‘O’-
levels, go straight to ‘A’-levels or International Baccalaureate, and hence spend more time
developing their interests and capabilities” (J. Ng, 2012). These comments are among the
only ones on the IB to be found in the news media from government or school officials.
Singapore’s results on the IBDP are impressive: in 2018, the average in Singapore was
38.49 of 45 when the world average was 28.58 (Ang, 2019); in 2019, more than half of the
69 perfect scores were obtained in Singapore (Wong, 2020). Despite these scores, educa-
tion officials have little to say about the merits of the IB. Instead, the suggestion seems to
be that the IB examination results demonstrate the success of Singapore’s education
system and style. This move rhetorically flips the IB on its head. Instead of endorsing the
IB, the IB is a benchmark for demonstrating the success of Singapore. Again, it should be
remembered that only top students pursue the IBDP in Singapore. Further, parents
provide their teenagers with private supplementary education in order to boost their IB
examination performance (C. Tan, 2017). This practice fits with the usual approaches to
study in Singapore but stands in contrast to the philosophy of the IB. Rather than the IB
10 M. LEE ET AL.

becoming something desirable, it becomes an indicator of the strength of the Singapore

education system.
The second consideration is that education authorities in Singapore are relentless in
their revising of the system through reflection on overseas practices. This approach has
been taken since the state’s formation in 1965. Gopinathan (2001) documents the ways
Singapore has adopted various education programmes, from public schooling to techni-
cal training, from other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and the
United States, as well as from corporations such as Rollei and Phillips (pp. 76–77).
Pedagogy, content, and the system itself are regularly reviewed. Ministry officials stay
abreast of global trends in education and choose practices they think should be adopted.
This habit gives the education system a great deal of flexibility. At the primary and
secondary levels, then, elements of convergence with the IB can be found. The language
of the school system resembles that of the IB, with emphasis on “holistic” learning and
integrated study of multiple subjects. This convergence makes Singapore’s experience
distinct from many other places, where the IB contrasts sharply with an inward-looking
national curriculum. The international element hardly distinguishes IB in English-speaking
Singapore, and many of the pedagogies already inform how teaching happens.
The IB has made inroads into a minority of local elite schools. However, these moves
have largely been made quietly, without an official effort to stress the quality of an IB
education. The institutional legitimacy of the IB should be seen as rather weak in the
Singapore context. Officials have ensured that the IB does not challenge the legitimacy of
the local school system. In Singapore, what has happened in education matches what has
happened in the economy. Instead of giving a wide berth to the private sector, the state
guides it carefully. In Singapore’s state capitalism, state-linked firms provide a large
portion of essential services. In education, too, the state anticipates the differentiation
that the market would otherwise bring. Instead of throwing the door open to private
firms, the state actively fosters that differentiation. Consequently, the IB does not become
a great disruptor – the state has already designed the stratification and placed the IB
within it. In symbols, too, authorities have placed the IB within an existing legitimising
framework rather than developing a new one around the IB.

The Korean case: curriculum borrowing for fixing the system

The IB was initially introduced by a few foreign or international schools in Korea in the
1980s. Three decades later in 2010, Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages, a local
private school, was first accredited as an IBDP school. It should be noted that private
schools in Korea are part of the public school system, given that they are highly regulated
by the national curriculum and education laws and are substantially subsidised by
government funding. Further, there is a subgroup of private schools called “foreign
language high schools”. These schools have a higher degree of autonomy in school
management, such as hiring teachers and curriculum implementation. Gyeonggi
Academy of Foreign Languages is one of such schools, offering a specialised language
curriculum alongside the national curriculum. It is a well-known local private school for its
high performance in getting students into prestigious universities in Korea. Notably, there
was no further progress on the introduction of IB programmes into local schools until
2018 when the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education commissioned policy research on
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 11

the introduction of the IB to local schools. Following this initial traction from the public
sphere, a group of educators and educational commentators evangelistically promoted
how the IB programmes can “fix” the persistent problems, such as the competitive
university entrance exam, facing the Korean schooling system. Like a snowball effect,
the group’s initial pro-IB discourse gained more public attention through media coverage
and policy-oriented texts on the merits and strengths built in the IB programmes (see
Maxwell et al., 2020).
In 2019, two major education authorities in Korea officially announced that they would
introduce IB programmes into local schools. Specifically, the Daegu Metropolitan Office of
Education has designated nine schools as pilot schools and plans to implement IB
programmes in local schools from 2021. The superintendent of the Daegu Metropolitan
Office of Education commented that: “We will cultivate future talents with interdisciplin-
ary creativity through the IB” (Song, 2019) and: “We want to build an essay-based
assessment system . . . for children to be creative and have critical thinking skills through
the IB” (S. Ji, 2019). The Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Office of Education has
announced a similar plan for implementing IB programmes. The superintendent of Jeju
Provincial Office of Education said: “With the introduction of the IB [to the Jeju Province],
we will prepare an assessment system, recognizing 100 correct answers to one question,
for the future society” (S. Ji, 2019) and proclaimed that “This is the biggest change in the
100 years of the history of the [Korean] modern education” (Song, 2019).
Subsequently, both local education authorities signed a memorandum of cooperation
in 2019 for the development of the Korean language version of the IB programmes.
Similar to the cases of Germany and Japan, a project for developing the Dual Language
Diploma kicked-off in 2019. The development procedure of a Dual Language Diploma
programme is anticipated to be accredited by the IB with its close monitoring and quality
assurance. This means that students in public high schools under the two local education
authorities could attend domestic universities by completing the IBDP, not necessarily
taking the national testing for university entrance. This change further means that the
national curriculum will be juxtaposed or even replaced with IB programmes in those
provincial areas. The two local education authorities aim to make this happen by 2023.
Notably, this policy initiative has pushed other local education authorities to consider
introducing IB programmes.
Given the speed of these developments, an emerging question is how the IB became
accepted in the local education system. Put differently, the question remaining unan-
swered is how the institutional legitimacy of the IB has been forged and gained within
such a short period in Korea. We identify several noticeable carriers that promote the
institutionalisation of the IB programmes in local school systems.
First is legality. To adopt the IB as an accredited curriculum in local schools, it should
meet regulative features of institutionalisation (e.g. rules, laws). Implementing IB pro-
grammes does not seem to violate statutory educational rights or education laws in
Korea. According to H. Lee et al. (2020), the current administrative regulation of primary
and secondary school curricula ensures that internationally validated curricula or courses
can be provided to local schools, based on the guidelines set by local education autho-
rities. In fact, this is a statutory base for Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages to offer
the IBDP for a particular group of students, apart from the national curriculum offered to
other students within the same school. Furthermore, top universities in Korea have
12 M. LEE ET AL.

already admitted students with IBDP scores by creating a special admission track, sepa-
rated from the national testing of university entrance set by the central government. That
is, IBDP graduate students from Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages and interna-
tional schools located in Korea can get into universities in Korea, whereas a vast majority
of high school graduates have to take the national university entrance examination. In this
regard, the presence of a legal basis for the IB to be adopted by local schools has been
a facilitating condition.
Second, shared values of the IB as a solution for school reform among some policy-
makers have emerged. The schooling system of Korea has been consistently criticised
because of the system’s insidious effects such as a hyper-competitive, testing-oriented
culture and system (Seth, 2002). There have been a series of education reforms.
Nonetheless, no reform has turned out to be successful in that there is always a limit in
school reform unless the university entrance system does not change in both paradigm
and practice. Amid this challenging situation, IB programmes have recently received
a spotlight as a “new cure” for the university entrance exam. As the two superintendents’
comments on the IB noted above indicate, there are two major reasons for this percep-
tion. First, the assessment in the IB programmes is perceived as pedagogically progres-
sive. For example, students’ ability is assessed with various inquiry-based learning
activities at school rather than taking multiple-choice tests. In addition, the IB pro-
grammes’ focus on non-academic areas such as Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) is seen
as pedagogically well balanced for cultivating future talents. The assessment in IB pro-
grammes is also perceived as academically rigorous. For example, the IBDP is charac-
terised as offering both breadth and depth of knowledge through six different subjects
with the option of standard and higher levels. In addition, theory of knowledge (TOK) and
extended essay (EE), as unique components of the IBDP, are interpreted as the ideal
prototype of assessment to measure students’ “thinking ability” in policy discourses and
media coverage. Policymakers from the two educational authorities also see the IB as
a solution in the regard that the assessment of the IBDP is based on criterion-referenced
exams in contrast to the national testing of university entrance based on relative evalua-
tion (i.e. implying sorting and selecting functions only). They seem to be further
impressed by the fact that the IB maintains that less than 2% of all IB graduates worldwide
receive full marks in the IBDP even though the IBDP is based on criterion-referenced
exams. In sum, given these characteristics of the IBDP portrayed in media and policy
reports, the IB has emerged as a ready-made solution for fixing existing schooling systems
that have been long hampered by competitive university entrance systems.
In addition, a number of public meetings, conventions, and events aligned with the
introduction of the IB have been taking place in recent years. For example, IB Director
General Siva Kumari’s recent visit to Korea to meet with the aforementioned super-
intendents and other policymakers has further ignited policymakers’ special attention
to IB programmes. The IB Director also met with another two key players in the Korean
education system; the superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the
largest local education authority, and the president of Seoul National University, the
most prestigious university in Korea. The Director also attended the Jeju International
Symposium on Education as a keynote speaker. These activities and artefacts (e.g. meet-
ings and conventions) appear to contribute to symbolically legitimatising IB programmes
as a trail-blazing policy solution for fixing the university entrance exam.
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 13

Alongside the growing traction from policymakers, educators from pro-IB groups share
expectations of the positive changes that the IB programmes can bring for the Korean
education system. As they believe that: “Changing the testing system [through the intro-
duction of the IB curriculum] would change the whole school system of Korea” (H. Lee, 2018,
pp.146–227), they expect that the introduction of IB programmes can “normalize” the public
schooling system through fixing insidious problems stemming from the current university
entrance exam (Maxwell et al., 2020). In this process, they also expect that teachers would
have more autonomy and authority in implementing school-level curriculum and assess-
ment tools that can boost teachers’ professionalism (J.-H. Ji, 2019), but also would stimulate
and inspire students to “think” critically and creatively, not “memorize” things (Park, 2019).
In sum, the institutionalisation of IB programmes into local school systems has been
legitimatised by existing regulative systems, key stakeholders’ shared values and expecta-
tions of the IB programmes, and their activities promoting the innovative and positive
features that IB programmes can bring for school reforms. In other words, the institutional
legitimacy of IB programmes as curriculum borrowing to local education systems has
been established within a short time period.

From a comparative perspective

In this article, we have demonstrated commonalities in how the IB is represented in and
accepted by the local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea. Across the
three societies, the IB has been recognised as an institutionally legitimised curriculum. The
international components built in the IB (e.g. international qualification for higher educa-
tion, the pursuit for intercultural understanding and competence) are highly regarded as
the IB’s legitimate positioning, particularly in Hong Kong and Singapore. In the case of
Hong Kong, the IB’s use of English as a medium of instruction has also been a selling point
to local schools where parents have not only a choice of which school to send their children
but also a choice about which curriculum to take. The Korean case shows that there has
been a growing public recognition of the IB as an academically rigorous and pedagogically
progressive curriculum. While the IB has a positive reputation across the three societies, the
IBDP has been mainly adopted by a few locally well-known private high schools. At the
same time, we discuss below how the IB’s institutionalisation process varied by each
society’s socio-historical context and needs. The IB was interpreted and positioned differ-
ently in the three local education systems. Specifically, the influx of the IB into local
education systems depends mainly on the presence of legality for the introduction of the
IB to local schools. Singapore has an established international schooling sector, which is
similar to Hong Kong, but in contrast to Hong Kong, Singapore, in general, does not
encourage or support local schools to adopt international curricula. Although the IB has
made inroads into a minority of local elite schools, similar to Hong Kong (and also Korea),
this move has been made quietly, without the government’s official promotion or to stress
the quality of the IB programmes, which is a sharp contrast to Hong Kong. That is, the
institutional legitimacy of the IB appears rather weak in the Singapore context and there is
a limited spillover effect of the IB into the local education system. The IB has not become
a widespread aspiration in the local system. In this regard, the IB’s influx into local education
systems in Singapore seems largely symbolic (e.g. a public image of academic excellence
based on impressive IBDP results) rather than substantive. Even the international element
14 M. LEE ET AL.

of the IB’s medium of instruction hardly distinguishes the IB from local education systems in
English-speaking Singapore. In addition, the IB’s reputation for pedagogical progressiveness
is not new to Singapore’s local education system that has historically adopted best
pedagogical practices from different parts of the world (Gopinathan, 2001). In fact,
Singapore’s innovative pedagogy in both paradigm and practice (e.g. Teach Less, Learn
More) has been praised and benchmarked internationally (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2012).
However, the IB’s representation in Hong Kong’s local education system appears
substantial. We note two distinctive reasons for this difference. First is strong legality.
Local schools (mostly elite private schools) can offer the IB programmes as long as they
are accredited by the IB. Local students can also attend international schools offering
the IB programmes, given the deregulatory policy of school choice. This statutory basis
facilitates the IB’s influx into local schools, particularly to DSS schools. In particular, elite
DSS schools offering the IB paved a legitimate “middle way” in the education market
between attending an international school and taking the national curriculum in a local
school. Second, the international component of the IB’s medium of instruction (i.e.
English) is a strong pulling factor for local schools to adopt IB programmes. English
medium of instruction schools in Hong Kong are especially popular for local parents and
students, given the presumed benefits for students’ English language proficiency has
been continuously recognised as a cultural capital for individual competitiveness (Poon,
2013; see also Lam et al., 2019). Not many schools offer English medium of instruction,
despite Hong Kong’s recent fine-tuned medium of instruction policy since 2010/11.
Under this circumstance, local schools offering the IB have been regarded as
a comparative advantage in the school choice market. Arguably, apart from the IB’s
contribution to internationalisation (Bryant et al., 2018), the IB’s institutionalisation in
Hong Kong’s local education system reinforces the school choice system, thereby
complicating the existing educational stratification.
Another nuanced difference between Hong Kong and Singapore is that upper-middle-
class local families in Hong Kong often send their children to international schools offering
the IB, rather than DSS schools (V. Ng, 2012). Upper-middle local families in Hong Kong
tend to have globally oriented careers and cosmopolitan sensibilities. For them, the IB
programmes are perceived as globally oriented education that fits well into their chil-
dren’s academic and career pathways (Wright & Lee, 2019). Therefore, IB schools are well-
positioned in the hierarchical system of school choice in Hong Kong. This hierarchy in
school choice contrasts to the Singaporean case where state capitalism has designed solid
stratification within the local education system, largely separated from the international
schools offering the IB. Therefore, a vast majority of local families in Singapore, regardless
of their socio-economic status, have to play the game within the existing system of
educational stratification. More importantly, local families subscribe to the idea that
Singapore’s local education system is strong, albeit competitive. As such, a social prestige
is attached to local elite independent schools, which prefer to be distinguished by their
“names” (explaining a lot about who they are) rather than the IB tag. In this regard, the IB’s
positioning as an institution in Singapore is symbolically justified as one shining ornament
representing the success of Singapore’s education system, although the IB’s institutional
positioning is limited, given that it is largely compartmentalised from the whole education
system. Arguably, the IB’s influx into Singapore’s local education system does not become
a strong disruptor or game-changer.
 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 15

The Korean case is somewhere between Hong Kong and Singapore, but also shows
a unique feature in the IB’s institutionalisation. In terms of legality, local private schools in
Korea are allowed to offer the IB programmes, which is the same as in Hong Kong. In
reality, however, the diffusion of the IB programmes into local private schools in Korea is
similar to that of Singapore where only a few local private schools adopt the IB pro-
grammes. As of 2021, there are only two private schools offering the IBDP in Korea. This is
because the IB was not well known to the public and adopting the IB in a local school
involves an array of bureaucratic hurdles and strong financial capacity, even though it is
legally allowed. As a result, like Singapore, IB programmes have been mainly implemen-
ted within a few international schools targeting expatriates in Korea.
What makes the Korean case distinctive from Hong Kong and Singapore is the change
(i.e. the policy motivation to introduce the IB into local schools) that has been initiated by
local education authorities in recent years. In this process of the IB introduction, the IB is
presented as a “cure” or “fix” to address the persistent problems (e.g. exam-oriented, hyper-
competitive university entrance exam that results in rotten learning and heavy pressures on
students) facing the Korean education system. Notably, the international features of the IB
such as globally oriented education or education for intercultural understanding, which are
celebrated in Hong Kong and Singapore, are marginalised in justifying the introduction of
the IB into local schools in Korea. Instead, the IB has been instrumentalized as a legitimate
policy solution for fixing the university entrance exam and normalising high school educa-
tion. In other words, the international components built in the IB, highlighted in Hong Kong
and Singapore, are rarely articulated in policy discourses and media coverage.
The potential of the IB’s spillover to local education systems in Korea is greater than
that of Hong Kong and Singapore, given that the introduction of the IB has been
promoted by local education authorities in the context of education reform. Although
policymakers in Hong Kong also see the IB as “flexible and inspiring curriculum” that
should be expanded to local schools to address the pressurised, exam-oriented, and
“spoon-feeding” national curriculum (Legislative Council, 2019, p. 2429), the Hong Kong
government delegates or devolves the introduction of the IB to each local school. In
Korea, as the IB has been gradually legitimatised as a ready-made solution for education
reform by some local education authorities, it is expected that Korea would take
a different pathway from the ways the IB has been institutionalised in Hong Kong and
Singapore.
Before concluding our paper, we note a couple of limitations in this study. First, although
we conducted a thorough documentary analysis as our evidentiary source, our study is not
free from the weaknesses of documentary analysis (see Yin, 2013, p. 106) such as inacces-
sibility to certain types of documents (e.g. minutes of policy meetings, memoranda
between the IBO and local governments) given that we utilised publicly available resources.
Second, while we have shed light on certain features of how the IB is interpreted and
positioned in each of the three societies, further investigations are needed to examine how
the introduction of the IB in each society is inter-related and thereby mutually influenced.

Conclusion
This comparative analysis of the three societies captures the complex roles and position-
ings of the IB in conjunction with local education systems. The IB has expanded
16 M. LEE ET AL.

continuously across the three societies. At the same time, its institutionalisation process
varies by each society’s socio-historical contexts and needs; substantive legitimacy as the
international curriculum of choice in Hong Kong, a quiet supplement to elite education in
Singapore, and instrumental curriculum borrowing for fixing the education system of
Korea. The institutionalisation of the IB is limited at a symbolic level, controlled by the
Singaporean government while that of the IB is saliently promoted by local education
authorities in the context of education reform in Korea. The institutionalisation process of
the IB in Hong Kong is primarily swayed by market principles under the existing school
choice system. Future studies would benefit from further exploring the institutionalisation
of the IB, along with its complex roles and positionings, in other local education systems.
Specifically, we await future research on how the varying pathways of the IB’s influx into
local education systems would impact educational equality and equity across different
societies in East Asia and beyond.

Acknowledgments
The authors appreciate the anonymous reviewers’ insightful comments.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
The first author acknowledges that this work was supported by the Yonsei University Research Grant
of 2020 and the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea (Grant NRF-
2017S1A3A2065967).

ORCID
Ewan Wright http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2313-6181

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20 M. LEE ET AL.

Appendix A.
2019/20 local school tuition fees for local students.

Diploma
HKDSE Programme
tuition fees tuition fees
DSS school in Hong Kong (US$) (US$)
Creative Secondary School 11,974 16,825
Delia Memorial School (Glee Path) 387 3,226
Diocesan Boys’ School 6,451 13,161
ELCHK Lutheran Academy 9,099 11,629
Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong N/A 13,161
Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College 4,477 12,258
St Paul’s Co-educational College 18,165 22,294
St. Stephen’s College 9,290 13,613
Hong Kong Chinese Christian Churches Union Logos Academy 4,168 10,797
Independent schools in Singapore (with effect from National Diploma
January 2020) Curriculum (IP) tuition fee Programme
(US$) tuition fees
(US$)
Anglo-Chinese School Independent 3,397 4,412
St. Joseph’ ‘s Institution 3,353 4853
Private school in Korea National Diploma
curriculum tuition fee (US$) Programme
tuition fee
(US$)
Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages 15,697 Not Available

Notes: The tuition fee of Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages is based on the 2018 academic year (Source: Han,
2019, October from Eduin News). The IBDP tuition fee at the school is reportedly higher than the national curriculum
tuition fee, but the school does not reveal it to the public. Notably, the average tuition fee of public high schools was US
$1,346 in 2018 (Source: C. Kim, 2019 from Business Insight).