@bookworm, it’s not clear to me that this discussion really has anything to do with IB at all. The only related element is that the student’s IB school does not have a blanket policy that eliminates penalties for IB students who miss IB classes while they are taking IB exams. The same issue could apply to an AP only school that has AP classes that that penalize students for missing class while they take an AP exam. OP seems to have some secondary complaints that he attributes to IB (too many Art based projects where you have to buy your own supplies and the rubric wasn’t clear?) but, as a parent of an IB diploma candidate (and with another AP focused grad), I don’t agree that IB requires any more art-based projects than the non IB curriculum did. I think this is one of those cases where a parent has complaints and attributes them to the (IB in this case) program instead of to how their particular school, or even teacher, operates.