All across Tualatin, junior and senior International Baccalaureate (IB) candidates breathed a collective sigh of relief when they received the happy news on Feb. 12.

“Our students will be assessed via the non-exam route for May 2021,” IB Diploma Program Coordinators Lisa Lacy and Shem Malone said in an official statement that afternoon. “IB will calculate a score for those who registered for an IB score (1-7) based on a student’s coursework, including the Internal Assessments [IAs].”.

This coursework also includes the HL essays for Language A Literature completed in the junior year, Theory of Knowledge essays and presentations and the ever-dreaded Extended Essay.

Full IB seniors celebrated the news of the exams’ cancellation, expressing their joy and relief that the exams would not be taking place.

“The idea of sitting for all of those exams was the scariest thing to me as a sophomore,” senior Dominique Fontanilla said. As a senior IB Diploma candidate, Fontanilla was never required to sit a single IB exam, as the tests were cancelled in both the 2020 and 2021 school years due to COVID-19.

Many students are glad that their IB scores will be based solely on their IAs and coursework rather than an in-person examination, predicting better calculated scores.

“I might be getting better scores than I normally would have. The physics exam is notorious for being a difficult one to take, and having my score be based on an untimed IA is actually favorable for me,” Fontanilla said.

Even students who felt prepared to take the IB exams in May feel as though they will be better off with scores based on their coursework.

“I think my classwork and my IAs are a better representation of my knowledge. I’m a really good test taker, but a lot of people aren’t, and classwork and IAs are more similar to real-world tasks, and therefore are better indicators of real-world abilities,” senior Jaden Hopkins said.

Teachers who worked diligently to prepare their students for the IB exams were a bit less happy with the cancellation than their pupils.

“I always structure my classes to support success on the exam, so I was a little disappointed that they didn’t happen. That said, I really did appreciate the freedom it gave me to focus on more social-emotional activities with my students. Since we weren’t spending the last weeks of class reviewing the content of the course, it opened up for a more pleasant end to the semester,” TuHS IB history teacher Stephen Johnson said.

Without IB exams taking place this year, however, the senior year may seem even more daunting for junior IB candidates than ever before.

“Junior candidates should listen closely to their teachers this year and take all of the practice IA stuff they do seriously, just in case something strange happens next year,” TuHS IB biology teacher Dielle Baker said.

“Most IB teachers use past paper questions for assessments so these will give you a sense of the type of questions you will see on the exams. Be talking to your teachers about how you can improve,”  Johnson advised juniors. 

After the stress that was 2020, all TuHS juniors and seniors can relax knowing that one particularly difficult assignment is now out of the way.