Presbyterian Ladies' College - Perth

PLC Perth is proud to be the only girls school is Western Australia to offer the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme in Junior School and the Diploma Programme for Year 11 and 12 students.

PLC’s Junior School has been offering PYP since 2005, and Head of Junior School Richard Wright said it was the school’s experience that the programme provided children with ownership of their learning.

‘The PYP is a curriculum and pedagogy that focuses on developing the whole child both academically and social-emotionally’, Mr Wright said. ‘PLC has written its own curriculum — our Program of Inquiry — that maps out six inquiries each year group delve into each year.

‘The inquiries have a central concept or idea teachers want children to develop and they guide the students to achieve this outcome while injecting the explicit literacy and numeracy skills that are a required in a primary education.

‘This is important for two reasons. The first is literacy and numeracy is taught in an authentic way, integrated into the engaging work of the inquiry. Secondly, the WA curriculum is extremely crowded and therefore only by teaching in an integrated, transdisciplinary, way can a teacher “cover” the required curriculum.’

In the Senior School, the Diploma is one of three pathways offered to students in Years 11 and 12. It is offered alongside the Western Australian Certificate of Education and vocational education and training courses. Principal Cate Begbie said the final two years of school were a launching pad for success at university and beyond and the IB Diploma was widely considered an excellent pathway for future success.

‘At PLC, we aim to help students develop their creativity, global awareness and critical thinking skills and the IB Diploma programme works hand-in-hand with our school values and our vision’, Ms Begbie said.