A passion for education
With a background in the military and business, new Director General Jeffrey Beard is a man who knows about disciplined growth. He tells Andrew Saunders how he plans to cultivate new partnerships to ensure a bright future for the IB
One of the many
thousands of
characters in the
standard written
form of Chinese is the symbol
known as wei ji. A compound
character, wei is the symbol
for danger, while ji represents
opportunity. The nearest
equivalent word in English
is usually taken to be crisis,
but a truer reflection of the
spirit of the Chinese characters
could be stated like this:
change has the potential to be
both dangerous and rewarding
at the same time.
This is a paradox which the
IB’s new director general,
Jeffrey Beard, might well
recognize. A top-level
corporate executive and
professional manager by
education and background,
Beard joins the IB during
a major period of change and
expansion. Annual growth
rates in terms of numbers of
students stand at around 15
per cent and a new strategic
plan is currently being
implemented. “I was hired on
the basis of taking the strategic
plan forward,” he says. “The
IB has reached a critical
stage. If we are going to be
able to sustain this kind of
growth we need to develop
more infrastructure and better
organizational capability.”
Such dynamic expansion presents Beard with a tremendous opportunity to thrust both the IB and theeducational philosophy it represents into the centre of the world stage. “We have historically been a very modest organization, but our reputation has been steadily growing,” he says. “There are an estimated 500,000 IB graduates singing our praises, and there is demand for IB programmes all over the world. What we have to do is decide what kind of footprint we want to have in five years’ time—what kind of schools, what kind of students—and plan our growth accordingly. The key to the whole strategic plan is to maximize our impact through managing growth.”
As luck would have it, planning growth is something Beard has learned a lot about in his 20-plus years of corporate life. Before his arrival at the IB in September (he remained director general designate until George Walker officially stood down at the start of this year), he was the chief operating officer of the seeds division of Syngenta—a key international role in one of the world’s leading agribusiness companies. “I’ve always been associated with growth companies and I know how to develop partnerships.”
If the idea of a director general with a background in business rather than education is anathema to some within the IB, Beard maintains that it shouldn’t be. He may not have worked in education before, but he is steeped in it. He has served on and been president of a school board, and not only comes from a family of teachers but is also married to one, while both his daughter (28) and son (25) are successful IB graduates.
“For all my life I have had an association with, and a passion for, education,” he says. Additionally, he identifies useful parallels between his old life and his new one. “At Syngenta I was managing very talented scientists who were passionate about what they were doing. At the IB I see similarly excellent, hugely skilled and committed people. But here their passion is for education.” His own particular talent, he adds, is neither for crop science nor for education but for management. “I bring the ability to help the organization achieve its mission through management, financial strength and the ability to change.”
All of which he will need in implementing the strategic plan. This is an impressively thorough document that identifies three strategic themes. First and foremost, the unmatched quality of IB programmes and services must be maintained. Second, access to those programmes must be widened, partly to counter recent and increasingly illfounded accusations of elitism, but mostly so that the benefits of an IB education can be experienced by a wider range of students, including more from disadvantaged backgrounds. And third, a robust and effective infrastructure must be created so the organization is able to deliver these goals. “My job is to make sure that we have the resources to achieve the plan over the next five to ten years.”
The goal of broadening access is already being vigorously pursued. In the USA the number of statefunded schools offering IB programmes is on the rise, and new schools with more disadvantaged student profiles are coming on board in countries such as China, Egypt and even the formerly war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. “They prove,” he says, “that the IB can make a difference anywhere. We are in inner-city schools in Chicago and New York, for example, and time and again we show that the bar is raised in these areas.”
On the infrastructure side, Beard is keen to develop external partnerships at the IB. We have been used to doing everything ourselves, which is fine when you are small, but the IB now has an operating budget of around US$60m, is involved with 1,600 schools and has over 200,000 students. Increasingly we need to delegate, to look outwards at who is doing what in the world of education, and how they can help us.”
That means everything
from outsourcing non-core
activities to linking up with
external providers to deliver
new IB services such as
distance learning initiatives.
Citing a favourite thinker—
Thomas Friedman, New York
Times columnist and author
of The World is Flat: A Brief
History of the 21st Century—Beard says that the IB needs
to live by its own principles, to
practise the borderless ethos
which makes its programmes
so attractive. “We need to use
those people who can do it
more effectively than we can,
to improve customer service
while sticking to what we do
best—education.”
He also has concerns that a lack of quantitative research data is hampering the organization’s acceptance and recognition of the IB diploma with universities. “We can’t say definitively ‘This is what an IB diploma is worth’ in terms of its equivalence to A-levels in the UK, for example. We are working on the research but it’s not there yet.”
Similarly, he notes, the flat fee charged to schools regardless of size or location needs to be re-thought. “It is intended to be fair. But we know some programmes are not covering costs, and school size, for example, affects our cost to support that chool.” For every ji, or opportunity, Beard realises that there is a concomitant wei, or threat. “As we grow, we have to ensure that we respond to schools and maintain our ability to deliver high-quality programmes and services in a consistent manner. If we don’t, our reputation will decline. This is a very altruistic organization with a unique passion for what it does. But altruistic organizations can sometimes go bankrupt too.”
Not that there is any real danger of such a drastic outcome—the IB has been running at the prescribed modest surplus its auditors recommend in recent years. But as Beard points out, growth costs money. “We need more IT, more research, more courses in development and more training. Demand for teacher training has grown hugely, and maintaining our investment in it is vital to the delivery of IB programmes.”
Fundraising will also be important: “We are currently recruiting for a development director, who will be responsible for external affairs and fundraising.” This person will have the task of making grant applications to other charitable funds which the IB might be eligible for. Another responsibility will be to grow the IB Fund through constituents and sympathisers who can make financial donations to it.
Beard himself aims to boost
the influence of the IB by
engaging in a higher-level
dialogue with national
governments and education
departments. He has, for
example, met with US
education secretary Margaret
Spellings regarding making
Diploma Programme courses
more readily available to state
schools as part of the US high
school reform programme.
“We punch above our weight,”
he says, “but we need to move
from being a successful niche
organization to one that has
a greater influence on the
educational mainstream.”
That doesn’t mean the IB will be signing any big government contracts, however. “One of our great strengths is that the IB is free from political tinkering. It is an international organization and we want to keep it that way.”
Award-winning journalist Andrew
Saunders is features editor on
Management Today
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CV
Jeffrey R Beard 
- 1 January 2006 Becomes director general, International Baccalaureate
- 1 Sep 2005 Director general designate, International Baccalaureate
- 2000-2004 Chief operating officer, Syngenta Seeds. Member of Syngenta group executive committee
- 1999-2000 Head of corn business, Novartis Seeds
- 1990 Chairman, United Way Campaign, US charity fundraising organization
- 1988 MSc in agribusiness, Iowa State University
- 1985 MBA, University of Wisconsin
- Mid-1970s US naval offi cer, specialising in anti-submarine warfare. Then several roles of increasing seniority with Procter & Gamble
- 1972 Graduates from US Naval Academy with BSc in analytical management
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