AGA KHAN IV | INSPIRING VOICES
AGA
KHAN IV MY VISION The Aga Khan Academies are based on the belief that home-grown intellectual leadership is the best driver of a society’s destiny, explains their founder
EDUCATING TOMORROW’S LEADERS
H
is Highness the Aga Khan is the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). He is the 49th hereditary Imam (Spiritual Leader) of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. In the context of his hereditary responsibilities, His Highness has been deeply engaged with development for the past 60 years through the work of the AKDN, a group of private, international, non-denominational agencies that work to improve living conditions and opportunities for people in the developing world. One of the AKDN’s key education programmes is the network of Aga Khan Academies – IB World Schools which are being established in 18 locations across 14 countries. They select students based on merit, regardless of their socio-economic background, ethnicity, religion or gender.
“WHAT STUDENTS KNOW IS NO LONGER THE MOST IMPORTANT MEASURE OF THE QUALITY OF THEIR EDUCATION” 32
When you set out your vision for the Aga Khan Academies, why did you opt for an IB curriculum? We could see several key areas of alignment with the International Baccalaureate. First was in the kind of education we wanted to offer and its underlying purpose. We also needed a curriculum that could help us develop home-grown leaders who are both globally aware and locally rooted, and a framework through which we could immerse our students in a pluralistic learning community. We knew that the IB could ensure the highest academic standards to prepare diverse students for the best universities worldwide. We believe that any educational endeavour must prepare young people for the world that lies ahead and its inherent uncertainties. It is clear that what students know is no longer the most important measure of the quality of their education. The true test is their ability to engage with what they do not know and to devise solutions, using their capacity for inquiry, critical thinking and problem solving. As students develop the ability to make informed judgements, they can begin to grapple with the most important and difficult step: learning to place such judgements in an ethical framework. These capacities, over the longer term, will be critically important to the developing world.
How has the IB curriculum helped the academies develop locally grounded, internationally minded leaders? The Aga Khan Academies aim to help students combine a cosmopolitan spirit on the one hand, with a strong sense of cultural identity on the other. The IB allows us to connect our students to global perspectives, while providing a framework through which we can expose them to their own history and culture. One way this takes shape is through language. Each academy operates a bilingual programme that includes English, for global connection, and a national language, to ensure that students can access the richness of their own heritage. Our students also have access to service opportunities and units of inquiry that give them insight into issues faced by people within their communities. For example, for the Primary Years Programme (PYP) Exhibition, students in Mozambique investigated ways to reduce waterborne diseases in their community. These local insights build lasting connections to the students’ home environments and eventually will allow them to develop solutions to problems that are suited to their own contexts. Within the curriculum, we have infused areas of special emphasis that we consider to be essential in the countries in which we operate. This ibo.org