Managing the school responsibilities

The responsibilities are laid out clearly but how can a school best achieve these? I personally feel that the Management of the school must set a very high priority for Extended Essays. It is something that all students and many teachers are unfamiliar with. Extended Essays should not just be seen as a hoop that Diploma students need to jump through. Extended Essays should be seen as an important and integral part of the students' education. From my experience of marking Extended Essays there would appear to be a clear correlation between high marks and students coming from those schools where the ethos of research and support in ingrained. This means that the school needs to be prepared to invest both time and money.

Suggested strategies might include:

Ensure that one well-qualified and experienced teacher has overall responsibility for the Extended Essay programme within the school. This person should have the status of a senior member of staff. In many schools it is the IB coordinator. However, particularly in a school with a large IB cohort, consider whether the IB coordinator can actually devote enough time to this additional role. Would it be better to give someone else the responsibility?

Ensure that enough money is made available from the school budget to cover all the costs involved with running the Extended Essay programme. Some schools pay each supervisor a small amount for each student they supervise, others do not. Whatever the practice in your school money will be definitely be needed for staff training, books for the library and IT resources.

Ensure that all teachers who will act as supervisors have been properly trained in the skills necessary to supervise to a high standard. This can be done in several ways. One way is to send teachers to relevant IB workshops. This is probably the most expensive way but they will benefit from the contact they gain with teachers from other schools as well as from the workshop leader(s). Another way is for teachers to train in their own time by registering for an online workshop organised by the IB. Alternatively, training for all teachers could take place by setting time aside within the school environment. This can be led either by an experienced outsider who has been invited to the school or by a member of staff within the school who already has the necessary expertise. Whatever way it is achieved it must be done. It is unfair on the students to provide them with a supervisor who has no Extended Essay supervision training. Make sure too that the training of supervisors is an on-going process particularly when new guidelines come in as they did recently for first examination in May 2018.

Ensure that the school librarian is also fully aware of all the requirements of the Extended Essay and consider also sending them on a training course. A well-trained and motivated librarian is a tremendous asset to all the Extended Essay students within the school. The librarian can be used to give advice on the correct way to reference material and set out a bibliography as well as giving help and advice in obtaining books, journals and other sources of relevant information. Keep copies of past Extended Essays and the grades they were awarded so that they can be consulted by future students. Encourage teachers to contribute with Extended Essays they receive through other sources, such as workshops or My IB.

Ensure that the school's IT Department is also fully aware of the requirements of the Extended Essay. They will need to give technical support and provide printing software and hardware. Consider investing in a plagiarism programme such as Turnitin.com. This will check that the work has not been taken from elsewhere and will add the Extended Essay to its data base so that other students cannot plagiarise from it. 

Ensure that a realistic timetable is drawn up after all stakeholders have been consulted. Decide when the process should start and when it should end and then stick to it. Most schools tend to start in the second term of the first year and the students have to complete their Extended Essays by the end of the first term in the second year. The actual deadlines for the external examiner to receive the Extended Essay are March 15th. (May session) and September 15th. (November session). Be sure to set your deadline well before this to pick up stragglers and complete the necessary paperwork and the viva voce (final mandatory reflection session). Most schools set the same deadline for all subjects but other schools do set subject specific deadlines.

Ensure how the students are going to be made aware of what an Extended Essay is and the requisite requirements. One way is for the Teacher in Charge of all Extended Essays to talk to all the students to give an overview. This is then followed by subject teachers explaining to the students they teach about the nature of Extended Essays in their specialist subjects. It can also be useful to get the second year students, who will have recently completed the process, to talk about their experiences.

Ensure that you have a mechanism in place which will enable students to be able to choose which subject they want to do their Extended Essay in. Decide beforehand the maximum number of students for any one supervisor.  How will you cope if many students want the same supervisor?

Once the supervisor has been linked with the student much of the responsibilities then rest with them. Consider how the school can further support both the supervisor and the student. Consider the role of parents - they can play a very necessary supportive role.

Ensure you have the necessary secretarial help towards the end of the process. Each Extended Essay requires a completed Reflections on planning and progress form that must be completed and signed by the supervisor and by the student. Ensure that a backup is made of each Extended Essay and that they are plagiarism-free. Ensure that you have the mechanism in place to enter the predicted grade for each essay on IBIS.

Consider introducing the process of Extended Essay writing lower down the school. This will not be an actual extended essay but could be a long project or extended piece of work completed by the student which would include some of the skills used in extended essay research and writing. Apart from its obvious educational value the the advantage of this is that students will be less stressed when it comes to doing their actual Extended Essay as they will already be familiar with some of the process.

Consider ways in which you can promote and maintain the profile of Extended Essays within the school.
Suggestions might include: 

An Extended Essay 'evening' where students present their work to a selected audience of governors, parents, teachers and students

Prizes for the best or most innovative essays

Publication in local papers or journals

Invitations to ex-students to talk about how their Extended Essay impacted on their current work

Invitations to university lecturers etc. to talk about their areas of research