Start here: how MYP Sciences works
MYP Sciences is not like IGCSE or the Diploma. There is no fixed list of topics you must cover and no final content examination set by the IB in the way IGCSE has one. Instead you are assessed on four skills — the four criteria — and the physics content is the material through which those skills are practised.
This page explains the machine. The four pages after it explain each criterion in turn, with physics examples. — Mr. Suta
📋The four criteria
Everything you are marked on falls under one of four criteria, each scored out of 8.
- A — Knowing and understanding. Do you know the science, can you apply it to a new situation, and can you weigh evidence to reach a judgement?
- B — Inquiring and designing. Can you turn a question into a fair test on paper — hypothesis, variables, method?
- C — Processing and evaluating. Can you present data honestly, read what it says, and judge how far to trust it?
- D — Reflecting on the impacts of science. Can you discuss what science does in the world, for good and ill, with balance and evidence?
A single task usually assesses only one or two criteria, not all four. Over a year your teacher makes sure each criterion is assessed several times, because your reported grade comes from your best, most consistent performance on each — not an average of everything.
📈The 1–8 scale, and how it becomes a grade
Each criterion is marked in bands: 0, then 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 7–8. The bands describe how well you did the thing, from “limited” at the bottom to “detailed and consistent, even in unfamiliar situations” at the top. At the end of the year the four criterion levels are added (out of 32) and converted, through IB grade boundaries, to a final grade of 1 to 7. Roughly: the top grade needs you to be operating in the 7–8 band on most criteria, most of the time.
🧩Concepts: what holds a unit together
Every MYP unit is built on concepts rather than on a topic title. There are three key concepts at the heart of Sciences:
- Change — a conversion or movement from one form, state or value to another.
- Relationships — the connections between properties, objects and ideas.
- Systems — sets of interacting or interdependent components.
Under these sit the related concepts for Sciences: Balance, Consequences, Energy, Environment, Evidence, Form, Function, Interaction, Models, Movement, Patterns and Transformation. In Physics specifically, Development is used in place of Balance. A unit on circuits might run on Systems + Energy + Function; a unit on motion on Change + Movement + Models.
These combine with a global context — the reason the unit matters in the world. There are six: identities and relationships; orientation in space and time; personal and cultural expression; scientific and technical innovation; globalization and sustainability; fairness and development.
Key concept + related concept + global context together produce the unit’s statement of inquiry — one sentence that says what big idea the unit is really about. For example: “Energy transfers within a system can be modelled and measured, and understanding them drives the development of cleaner technologies.” If you can see the statement of inquiry behind a task, you can usually see what the assessment is really asking for.
🧠ATL: the skills underneath
Alongside the science you are building Approaches to Learning skills, grouped into five clusters: communication, social, self-management, research and thinking. They are not graded directly, but they are exactly what criteria B, C and D reward — a well-designed investigation is a research-and-thinking skill made visible.
📝The command terms grow with you
The same four criteria run from MYP Year 1 to Year 5, but the verbs get more demanding. In Year 1 a strand asks you to describe; by Year 5 the same strand asks you to explain, and the top one asks you to analyse and evaluate. Learn the command terms — state, describe, explain, analyse, evaluate, discuss — because they tell you precisely how much is expected. The criterion pages here use the Year 5 wording, since that is the target the earlier years build towards.
💻The MYP 5 eAssessment
Students who complete MYP Year 5 can sit the on-screen eAssessment in Sciences, a two-hour examination that leads, together with moderated coursework, to the formal IB MYP Certificate. It tests the same four criteria in exam conditions, using unfamiliar data and scenarios — which is why the ability to apply and evaluate, rather than recall, is what pays off.
🔗How MYP differs from IGCSE and the Diploma
If you are moving between the branches of this site, the shift is worth naming. IGCSE and the Diploma give you a defined body of content and examine how much of it you can deploy. MYP gives you a set of skills and examines how well you can practise them on whatever content is in front of you. The physics is real in all three; what changes is where the marks live.
MYP is the best possible preparation for the Diploma’s internal assessment and for AS/A Level practical papers, because criteria B and C are exactly those skills, started early.
📅A note on the enhanced MYP (2027)
The IB is enhancing the MYP, with first teaching in September 2027 and first eAssessment in May 2030. For Sciences the four assessment criteria A–D are not changing. The main shift is in how concepts are organised — the current key-plus-related structure becomes a single list of specified concepts — and in giving teachers more freedom in how they frame a unit’s inquiry. Everything on these pages remains current, and the criteria they explain are stable through the transition.