Elite Education for the People? : Nuances of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in Polish High Schools

Sammanfattning: The International Baccalaureate (IB), a private curriculum associated largely with exclusive education for transnationally mobile upper classes, has recently began to quietly enter public, national education systems, offering its alternative, elite schooling in tuition-free state institutions. This paper explores the nuanced case of Poland, where IB diploma program is offered as one of the tracks within state schools, existing side-by-side and competing with the national curriculum. Poland, with its particular post-soviet socio-political conditions, where public schooling continuously enjoys an elite status over the failed project of private education, presents an interesting case in regards to the phenomenon. This study employs Pierre Bourdieou’s theories of capital, dispositions and social field to examine the makeup of IB classrooms in public schools in Poland, and answer how the curriculum is experienced and made sense of by the graduates. Qualitative interviews with 17 graduates present an insight into the experience of IB in 6 state schools. The study has found that IB diploma program is primarily employed in well-established, elite institutions, which follow a meritocratic logic of technical selection of only the most talented candidates. IB becomes the academic elite club within an elite club, therefore access to it is limited twofold. Accounts across the case study schools showed that IB students are characterized by access to higher volumes of different resources, allowing them to get admitted, survive the academic rigor, and continue their education abroad. Graduates from all types and locations of IB schools follow, almost exclusively, the same three trajectories according to which an IB student considers either a) going abroad to the United Kingdom, b) going abroad to the Netherlands, or c) studying medicine in Poland at the Warsaw Medical University (WUM). Finally, the study has found that students use IB strategically, to access prestigious national or international higher education. However, the conversion of the assets gained through the diploma into advantage in higher education is interrupted by the pedagogical disparity with the ‘mindless memorizing’ at national universities, as well as with the automatic downward social mobility when becoming an immigrant. The findings contribute to the debate over the democratization of international education, its accessibility and the strategic use of it on a national versus international arena.