An interview with Dr Siva Kumari, the head of the International Baccalaureate

Dr Siva Kumari, the head of IB since January 2014, is also the first woman to be appointed to this position. Dr. Kumari is keenly aware of the data used by schools today to measure student attainment, and intends to use this data and technology to transform IB into a world leader by adopting 'Strategy 2.0'.

"My personal ambition and the organisation's strategy is to be able to get really good at quickly sharing what's working well in a certain type of school,” she said. “We have so many different types of schools all around the world, so I hope we get really precise about saying we know a certain type of school in a certain setting will need a particular kind of thing, and we can be predictive. And with data the way it is right now, and what you can do with it, in future we'll be able to use it much better. "Our future ambitions are at some point, if we get really good at using this technology, we don't want to restrict those best practices to only IB schools. We are a not-for-profit with a mission and we want to be able to open up those practices to anyone who has a device essentially.” "Besides just teaching in schools, we give teachers opportunities to teach each other. So we train them if they want to go and teach someone else. We also train them to go see other schools. Why this is important is because it's different than what a school offers. A school offers them the chance to teach other students, and there's an art to that and it's their responsibility. "What we're offering them in addition to that is professionalization. So if you go see another school, you become an evaluator, you're a peer evaluating another school. And when you go teach another teacher, you're also doing something other than teaching in a school. So I think what we try to do is give all those sorts of experiences to teachers as well."

“What I want the IB to become is this great connector of students and educators. If a student is studying environmental sustainability or building the tallest building in Dubai, there's no reason why they can't collaborate with someone in south-side Chicago or Yokohama Japan.”

For more information, go to http://www.ibo.org/news/news-about-the-ib/the-ibs-director-general-on-her-vision-for-the-ib/