The "Personal Project" is meant to be a culmination of student learning, with a focus of the areas of interaction.
Just as with the extended essay in the IB Diploma Programme, students are required to choose an academic or non-academic topic subject for their project, which they are expected to complete over the course of the school year.
Students are required to keep a personal journal while working on the process, and schedule regular meetings with an MYP teacher who will serve as their adviser throughout the year; in addition, a final reflection must be written upon the completion of the project which explains how it ties in with at least one of the Global Contexts.
However, each subject group must receive a minimum of 50 hours of curriculum time each academic year.
In years 4 and 5, schools can request to only require students to receive 50 hours of instruction in six of the eight subject groups.
Schools are given much flexibility to allow them to introduce subjects they consider important and organize their own student assessment and reporting procedures.
The pass mark is 28 and the candidate must meet the Service and Actions requirements set by the school.
Language and Literature[21] Language Acquisition[22] Individuals and Societies[23] Sciences[24] Mathematics[25] The Arts[26] Physical and Health Education[27] Design [28] Interdisciplinary learning[29] Personal Project[30] The Middle Years Program was developed significantly later than the Diploma Programme, and in parallel to and independently of what would become the Primary Years Programme.
The headmaster at the time, Lister Hannah, led discussions on the potential of developing a new two year pre-IB curriculum at the Association of International Schools in Africa conference in Nairobi in October 1978.
[36] This conference recommended the development of a course to meet the needs of students aged 11–16 years, with a focus on six key 'needs', which were described as Global, Intellectual, Personal, Physical, Creative, and Social.
From 1983 to 1990 the discussions crystallized into a five-year curriculum for students aged 11–16, rather than a purely pre-IB course.
At the 1987 ISA annual conference in Svendborg, it was decided to pilot the newly designed curriculum.
[38][39] The Chicago Tribune reported that in 1998 in that city's Beverly area, only 67 students in the 8th grade chose to attend a local public high school offering an IB curriculum.