The new HL syllabus covers 240 hours of lessons (including the 30 hours of "mathematical toolkit"). There is a lot of new material in the applications course - how much is new will depend, at least to some degree, which HL "options" (calculus, stats and probability, discrete etc.) teachers have experience of teaching as the majority of 'new' items come from various pre-2019 syllabus HL "options". 

A reminder that  on these pages there are a set of posters, giving an overview for students, parents and colleagues, of the entire content for SL and HL in both the Applications and interpretation subject and Analysis and approaches, as well as the common content

The below important information impacts on the development of a Scheme of Work. However, if you are in a hurry to dive into a week-by-week content guideline, click here. 

Applications and Interpretation focused

The design and elements of the course actually allow for a good deal of creativity in designing a course. There are a wide range of useful schemes of work that teachers can vary according to . . 

• What order is necessary? What can change?
• When will I do the Internal Assessment? What has to come first?
• If you also have to teach IB students: AP statistics, AP calculus, the German Arbitur, A-levels, Chinese GaoKao, All India Secondary school leaving Certificate etc. - this will obviously impact the order, and time, spent on different topics.
• Which cross unit topics might go well together? Where do concepts overlap?

...

This 'subject': Applications and interpretation (with either the HL or SL 'course') is new, with a new name and a new structure. The next curriculum review is likely just to be fine tuning. That means that we will have at least 14/15 years of this course (and probably more). What I find most stimulating about the new subject is the central aim to make the applications explicit. Our young people are growing up in what is widely held to be 'the 3rd industrial revolution' (now the '4th industrial revoluiton!'). Mathematics lies at the heart of this exciting evolution in technology, Fusion energy, drone development, crypto currencies etc. etc. Trawling through the history of mathematics, one finds an interplay, a 'feeding of the one from the other', between pure and applied mathematics. I think it is rare (if at all) that mathematicians responsible for the development of a new area of mathematics were not aware, and their work influenced, by the scientific/technological problems of their day. To this end, the following scheme of work is designed around solving, and developing, solution(s) to a central 'problem' i.e. putting the learning of mathematics into/against the context of solving a concrete problem. As Elon Musk has commented when interviewed about the school he has provided for his own children: "it's important to teach to the problem, not to the tools . . a more traditional course would start with teaching you all about screwdrivers and wrenches . . a better way to do it would be to say, "here's an engine, now how are we going to take it apart?". Oh, we'll need a screwdriver, that's what the screwdriver is for, we'll need a wrench, that's what the wrench is for . . this way a very important thing happens, the relevance of that tool becomes apparent". 

SL as a subset of HL

In an HL/SL mixed classroom, the spread of abilities will be large. A pilot by the IB on 2012-2019 syllabus HL/SL students suggested that HL students complete questions on average about 30% faster than SL students. This time saving, taken into consideration alongside the greater depth of understanding that is required of an HL student e.g. an HL student’s deeper understanding of the concepts around “t-tests” – unbiased estimators of population standard deviation from a sample, central limit theorem (items not included in the SL syllabus) etc. means not only a different speed, but perhaps a different approach also.

A class of SL Level 5 and above, mixed with an HL class, is likely to be a better combination than an unfiltered SL/HL mix (depending on the numbers and flexibility of staffing/timetabling in any particular school). Teaching classes from SL level 3 (or below) to HL level 7 would be challenging.